Danny and the Clew Crew
by beb
Summary: Danny Phantom is trying to bring in a ghost haunting an abandoned Aquarium when he runs into four teenagers and an obnoxious dog, also there to catch a monster and find a treasure. Will this be a match made in heaven or a bitter clash of ghost-fighters?
1. Chapter 1

Danny and the Clew Crew - Chapter I

"Well, gang, there it is, Amity Park!"

"And that must be the old, abandoned Aquarium where the ghost is supposed to be."

"It's kind of small."

An antique and gaily decorated VW Microbus rolled to a stop in an empty parking lot in front of a small, low brick building. Four teenagers and an enormous Rottweiler stepped out of it to survey the building. It was roughly cross-shaped with reflecting ponds in the corners between the front of the building and the wings. The garden area was overgrown with roses forming an impenetrable tangle. The front of the building had a large arch over the front doors, covered in glossy tile with a fish motief. Despite years of neglect the entrance to the old aquarium still had a pleasant and attractive appearance.

"They sure knew how to build them in the old days," said a short red-headed girl in a heavy sweater and short pleated skirt.

The tall brunette next to her sniffed and said, "looks pretty junky to me."

"You'd look junky, too, if you didn't have any make-up," replied the shorter girl. The brunette scowled and moved over to help one of the boys find something in the bak of the van. The boy was blond and immaculately dressed in dockers and a Polo shirt. The shoes on his feet could have fed an orphan child for a year. he came up with a handful of flashlights which he passed out to the others. "Let's look around and see if there's some way into the Aquarium."

They split into pairs and started around the building from opposite sides. The red-hair stuck her arm through the arm of the tall, lanky framed boy with her, and leaned in familiarity.

"Isn't this wonderful, Groovy," she said. "We're on our own, having an adventure in another city, just the four of us!" The dog had been walking next to them sniffing the ground. At her words it stopped and looked at her. After a moment it started walking again but seemed to regard the girl warily.

"Like, totally, Zelda," he agreed. "Just you, me - and Alphonse, of course. Can't forget my bestest friend. Come here, big fella, give me a hug," the boy, Groovy, dropped the girl's arm and grabbed the rottweiler and pulled him up on two feet and hugged him. The girl, Zelda, scowled for a moment, then flicking her flashlight over the side of the building moved on. "Come on, Groovy," she said, suddenly all business, "We've got work to do."

On the other side of the building the brunette was watching the skies more than she was the sides of the old, abandoned aquarium. "What a lovely night, isn't it Curtis?"

The boy nodded. "Sure thing, Phyl. The moonlight will give us enough visibility to move around without tripping over stuff but we'll still be able to hide in the shadows."

"But don't you find the moon, all big and yellow and warm, all romantic?" she asked.

"There's no time for that, we've got a mystery to solve!" the boy replied.

"What about the mystery of womanhood?" the girl suggested.

"What?" the boy looked at her blankly.

"Nevermind." After a moment. "Do you really think that stolen bank money is still in there?"

"It was never listed as being found."

"But it's such a small building. I've sure they looked. I'm sure lots of people looked. How could they not have found it if it was really there?"

"We'll know better, Phyl, once we find a way inside."

"A brick through a window usually works," she suggested.

The boy drew back in shock. "Phyliddia, how could you suggest such a thing. That would be 'breaking and entering.' We're here to solve mysteries not commit crimes!"

"Am I even here?" the girl mumbled and followed the blond around the building.

They found the other two at the back of the building in an area of rotting pallets, discarded drums, pails and machinery of unknown purpose. The lanky Groovy was fumbling with the door beside a small loading dock.

"Just about got it," he said when he noticed Curtis and Phyl joining them. Zelda held her flashlight so Groovy could see what he was doing. It seemed to involve a dentist pick.

"What are you doing?" Curtis demanded.

"Why nothing, man," Grovy said as he suddenly pulled the back door open. He quickly pocketed the steel tool he'd been using. "Like, the door was unlocked, man. I just had to jiggle it a little to open. It's cool."

Curtis looked doubtful for a moment, then brightened. "OK, now we have our way into the Aquarium. Let's block this door open in case we have to make a sudden exit."

"You think we'll meet the ghost that's haunting this place?" the brunette Phyllidia asked.

"It always pays to be cautious," Curtis answered.

The door lead into a small storeroom, maybe twelve deep and the width of the building. barrels and drums on pallets were piled up against the wall, some were stacked two high. Some of those pallets had collapsed, spilling their contents across the floor. In the center of inner wall was a large roll-up door, beside it was a regular-sized door. Zelda marched up to the door and twisted the handle. "Locked!" she grunted.

"Let me, like, look at it," Groovy offered. Something metallic glittered in his hand.

"Is that a lockpick?" Curtis demanded.

"No-o-o. maybe. I need it to open my locker at school."

"What's so hard about remembering a three number combination?" Phyllidia wondered.

"It is Groovy we talking about," Curtis whispered as if that explained everything.

A moment later the door opened and they filed through into a long, narrow hall with glass windows lining the sides all the way into the distance. The hall had a high arched ceiling, all covered in glossy tiles. Their footsteps echoed down the hall like the clatter of tap-dancers.

The glass windows were the fish tanks in the Aquarium. The place must have been abandoned in place as the tanks still had water in them, maybe a third full, thick with green scum in most cases. The fish had been removed, shipped to other Aquariums, the lights turned off and that was that.

They walked down the long corridor to where the two wings met, forming a small plaza in the middle of the building. In the center of the plaza was a statue. It was of a man sitting cross-legged on the ground. Two objects were in his upraised palms. A man and a woman were in one palm, a stylized 50's era atom in the other.

"What the-?" Zelda wondered.

"It says here that this is the Spirit of Amity Park. Whatever that is," Phyl read from a small plaque set in the floor before the statue.

"Weird," Groovy commented.

"Rugly," barked the dog.

"You got that, Alphonse, it is kind of ugly," the boy said, rubbing the dog's head.

"Dogs can't talk, Groovy," Zelda declared. This seemed to be an old and sensitive issue for her.

"Alphonse is special. He's smarter than most dogs. Isn't he. Whos' a good boy? You are. You're a good boy." this last was directed to the rottweiler.

"Let's keep looking," Curtis suggested, patently ignoring the lanky boy and his dog.

With a bitter look Zelda turned away and directed her flashlight into a corner of the intersection of halls. Two eyes glittered back at her. She had the impression of scales and a blue shirt before it leaped at her. "Guys!" was all she could scream before it was on her.

The monster knocked her sprawling and fell on top of her with a howl. It breathed fetid breath in her face while snapping what looked like a alligator's jaw in her face. 'Crocodile', some deep part of her mind corrected. Alligator's teeth goes this way, crocodile's go that way. The rest of her mind was busy screaming.

She tried jamming a knee into the monster's crotch like she'd learned in self-defense class, but either he didn't have a crotch or it was armored like the rest of his body. She tried pulling one of her hands free from its grasp. One slipped free and she jammed it under the monster's massive jaw and pushed up. Someone threw themselves on the monster's back and tried to wrestle for a hold on his head. Zelda wasn't sure but it sounded like Groovy's grunt when the monster knocked him off with a backhanded blow.

Suddenly something hissed blazing fire into Zelda's eyes. Pepper spray! The monster coughed as the bulk of the spray went down its throat. It stagged back, freeing Zelda. She scrambled to her feet and sprinted towards the door they had propped open. She bounced off the wall once from her tearing eyes, then someone caught her hand and lead there through the storage room and then the outer door into the cool, fresh air of the outdoors. The foursome ran a bit more until they were sure the monster wasn't following them, then collapsed on the ground, panting from exhaustion and shock.

"You OK, Zelda?" Curtis asked, handing her tissue that Phyllidia handed him.

"That's cold cream," the tall girl said. "Wipe down your skin but keep it out of your eyes." Then she handed Curtis a small plastic bottle. "Eye drops. They should wash most of the pepper spray out of your eyes."

"You got anything for a nervous breakdown in that bag of yours?" Zelda asked as Curtis carefully poured the drops into her eyes.

"I'm not that kind of a pharmacy. You'll have to ask your boyfriend about that."

"Boyfriend? Groovy? He's only got eyes for that dog!"

"I thought you were dating?"

"So did I. Someone forgot to tell Groovy."

"Enough chitchat," Curtis said, getting to his feet. "Clearly the Amity Park monster is real and we were getting close to its lair. We'll have it captured in no time."

"And the treasure?" Groovy and the dog, Alphonse, had wandered over from where they had been laying.

"And, yes, the treasure."

"Look, I'm not going back in there tonight," Zelda said firmly. "I think I've been beat up enough for one night. let's find that hotel you were talking about Curtis and check in. I need a hot bath!"

The moon has only risen a bit more when a small dark spot flew across its broad, ivory colored face. The spot circled, neared and finally dropped to the ground, the form of a boy of medium height with snow white hair and dark form-fitting clothes. A fanciful letter "D" graced his chest, a grim scowl formed his face. He walked briskly around the abandoned Aquarium looking, as the foursome before him, for any sign of recent activity. His eyes narrowed when he saw the loading platform door still open from when the Clew Crew had fled through it. With a final look around to be sure no one was sneaking up behind him, the boy walked through the door.

It was too dark inside to see, even with the full moon shining brightly outside. The boy raised his hand and suddenly it was surrounded by a soft green glow. It didn't provide a lot of light but it helped dispel the gloom.

A quickly glance around the storeroom showed that nothing had been disturbed there. A door into the interior of the building beckoned and Danny Phantom stuck his head in there. For a moment he forgot what he was doing there and gawked at the series of aquariums built into the side of the walls. Holding his glowing hand near some of the bronze plaques he read about the fish that once inhabited these tanks. This place was a lot different from the Aquarium in Baltimore his parents had taken him to some years before. Like pictures of old zoos where animals were held in small iron-barred cages he wasn't sure whether this was aa good idea or not. Still he felt the lose that his town had decided this Aquarium was too expensive and had closed it.

It was with a jolt when he came to the intersection of the Aquariums two wings that he remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. A ghost was loose in Amity Park and by all accounts was terrorizing people in and around Thoroughgood Park. Danny had made it his duty to capture all loose ghosts in his town and throw them back into the Ghost Zone where they belonged. This was probably a bigger than average responsibility for a fourteen year old boy but then, as the old cowboy in the movies always said, "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

He was looking down the wings, trying to decide which to tackle first when he noticed that his breath had turned to frost. Danger, his ghost sense was saying.

Danny looked up and found the pair of eyes staring at him from the corner of the intersection. The soft light from the glowing ectoplasm surrounding his hand revealed a man-sized creature with a crocodile's face and tail.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Danny said. He reached behind him and pulled out a Fenton Thermos. "It's time for you to go back to the Ghost Zone. Party's over. So what's it going to be?"

He waited for the ghost's answer.

It was a long count. Then the monster tore out a length of railing and swung it at Danny. Apparently it was going with plan B.

Curtis at the wheel, the foursome drove back to the street. A couple of quick right hand turns brought them around the edge of the park to a row of hotels on what was obviously the city's main drag. The Comfort King Inn looked like an ancient motorlodge stuck between a high-rise Sheraton and a sprawling Ritz. It looked like the kind of place that survived on the overflow from its two better of neighbors. Curtis pulled into an open parking spot and they got out. "Show time, Groovy," he called as the lanky kid started wandering off towards a vending machine.

"I was just getting a snack," he protested.

"Snack later. We've got to check in first." Curtis was rummaging in the back of the van. He pulled out a wrinkled linen sports jacket in a soft pastel hue. He tossed it to Groovy. "Get dressed - and comb your hair!"

Groovy, by dint of poor parenting, was in the same class as the others but a couple years older. Old enough to have a credit card and be able to sign things like hotel registers. As an adult he could be, theoretically, responsible for the others. The challenge was to make him look responsible. After much thought it was decided that a Miami Vice style jacket would best pull this off. Groovy in a shirt and tie would only look like a kid pretending to be an adult.

Inside, Groovy approached the manager and handed him his credit card. "Like, Edsel Ford Williams and, like, party. We have a reservation."

The manager looked at him suspicious then asked for some identification. Groovy found his driver's license and handed it over. The manager looked at it like he'd never seen one before, then went back into a corner where a computer sat on a small desk. He typed on it for a couple minutes before coming back, all smiles on his face. "Welcome to the Comfort King Inn, Mr. Williams. Sorry for the delay. You asked for two adjoining rooms with a connecting door, right."

"Totally, man."

Edsel Ford "Groovy" Williams was the son of globe-trotting competitive surfers. They had taken him everywhere with them. They claimed to be home-schooling him but, as with anything not having to do with surfing, they forgot to follow through with it. When Groovy's father turned 35 and finally received his trust fund money he decided it was time to retire from the circuit and only surf recreationally. They moved into one of Groovy's grandfather lesser mansions and, of course, had to sent Groovy to school. And only then was it discovered how ill-prepared he was. Instead of going into the 5th grade with kids his age, he was placed in third, where he met Curtis, Phyllidia and Zelda while trying to check out some Encyclopedia Brown mysteries from the school library. They quickly formed a club to talk about their favorite mysteries, share books, and of course, hang out with like-minded people. They named their club "The Clew Crew" because Curtis like alteration

His name? That was his grandfather's favorite car, and what his grandfather wanted, he got. He had all the money, after all.

The rooms were small but clean. The kids dropped their suitcases on the floor and gathered for a brief pow-wow. Curtis was all for going out to eat. Phyllidia, naturally, agreed to go with him. Zelda insisted on taking a bath while Groovy was already absorbed with the hotel's cable offerings and had forgotten about his earlier hunger. He was all for ordering in a large pizza. Zelda was fine with that, "as long as you save some for me," she instructed. When it came to pizza Groovy had a bottomless pit of a stomach.

Having agreed on a plan, the girls went back to their room and closed the connecting door while Phyl changed outfits. Phyliddia didn't believe in wearing the same clothes twice - or for more than a couple hours at a time. Zelda was filling the bathtub with hot water when she left. Zelda closed the door and carefully pressed the lock. She planned on having a long soak and didn't want any interruptions.

As the tub filled, Zelda pulled off her bulky sweater and folded it neatly on the counter. The pleated skirt followed. She stood looking at herself in the mirror. Zelda didn't much care for what she saw. She was short and stocky but not actually fat as people tended to assume. Her abdomen was as flat as Phyl's, but where Phyliddia had a definite waist and hips Zelda was one straight line. Thick thighs, study ankles. Just once she would like to be tall and willowy, like a model.

And her hair!

It wasn't exactly red. It was almost carrot-orange. And kinky. She wore it short just so there would be less she'd have to deal with.

Zelda turned to look at her right side where she had fallen when the monster had jumped her. Already she could see the faint discoloring that in the morning would be a horrendous bruise. The bruise was growing under a scattering of scabs from when she had tripped down a ravine the week before. She scratched at one to see if it was ready to come off. It wasn't but she kept picking at it for another minute until it stated bleeding again. That reminded her of her leg. Sure enough there were abrasions all along its length from when she fell to the floor. They didn't look serious. For a moment Zelda wondered why she was the one who always got hurt on this mysteries. Phyl never seemed to as much as break a nail while Curtis never broke a sweat. As for Groovy and alphonse...It was said that God looks out for fools and the innocent...

Thinking of the dog, reminded Zelda that when she'd fallen down that ravine she had tripped over the rottweiler who had unexpectedly gotten underfoot. It was her fault for not looking where she was going, but it hadn't been for that meddling dog...!

With a sigh she unhooked her bra and tossed it on top her sweater and skirt. Panties followed. She stepped into the hot water and slowly eased down until only her face was above water. She saw a bottle of bubble bath on the side of the tub and on impulse dumped it into the water. She swooshed the water around some and played with the bubbles before laying back and closing her eyes. Baths were the only time she didn't mind being short. It made the tub seem all the larger and she could stretch out in it in ways that someone taller couldn't.

Zelda was on the verge of falling asleep when she heard a rattle on the bathroom door latch. "I'm in here." she called, thinking that Phyl had returned already from dinner.

There was no answer. A moment later the latch rattled again. "Who's out there?" Zelda called, disturbed by the silence of whoever it was. If it was one of her friends they would have said something.

There was silence again.

Then this time the door slowly swung open.

"Hey! Occupado! Occupado! Stay out" she shouted, then stopped, feeling a little foolish because poking his nose through the door was Alphonse. Just the dog, she thought with relief.

Odd, though, that the dog had been able to get in when she clearly recalled locking the door. Well, it was an old hotel, maybe the lock didn't work...

Zelda slid back down in the tub and tried to relax. But the dog sitting quietly in the doorway looking at her spoiled the mood. In fact there was something weird about the way the dog just sat there looking at her. Looking and grinning. Not that dogs could grin, of course, but there was a sparkle in his eyes that suggested a grin. In fact for a dog he seemed to be enjoying himself all too much.

"Groovy!" she screamed.

"Zelda?" came his answer, "Like, what's the matter?"

"Get over here!"

A moment later she could see his shadow in the doorway. ""Like, what's the 4-1-1, man?" he was asking.

"Don't come in!" she shrieked.

"What?" Groovy asked from outside the door. "Make up your mind. Do you want me or not?"

"I'm in the tub. Get your dog out of here."

"Why, ol' Alphonse isn't doing anything."

"He's staring at me!"

When Groovy didn't say anything she added: "When he stares at me I see the eyes of a ninety eye old pervert!"

"He's just a dog."

"Just get him out of here!" Zelda demanded.

"I thought we were, like, you know, dating.. I thought it was, like: 'love me, love my dog'?"

"I thought we were dating, too," Zelda said, stressing 'thought' as if to say maybe I made a mistake. "Just get that dog out of here. - and close the door."

"OK! Come on Alphonse, we know when we're not wanted..."

Before leaving the dog did a strange thing. It lifted one paw to its head, almost touching its eyes, then stretched it out to point at the girl in the tub, almost as if pantomiming "I'm watching you." Then it slowly got up and walked out of the room. Groovy pulled the door shut and Zelda was alone with her thoughts.

Phyl and Curtis had been going steady for the past year so it only seemed natural that the other couple in the Clue Crew start going out. And it felt nice to be able to say of someone, 'he's my boyfriend.'

There had been a dearth of boys interested in taking a short, dumpy girl out on a date. So when Groovy had expressed an interesting going to movies and dances with her she had been ecstatic. She didn't realize that she would be sharing her boyfriend with a two hundred pound pure-bred rottweiler. That would make an interesting episode of Dr. Phil. "It's me or the dog."

Zelda sat up in the tub shivering. What had once been pleasantly hot water had somehow become cold and no matter how much fresh hot water she added the tub remained at best tepid. "So much for a relaxing bath," she groused as she got out of the tub and dressed.

The moon was high in the sky now, shining a silvery whiteness when two mopeds glided into the parking lot outside the old Aquarium. The mopeds circled the parking lot once before coming to a stop in front of the Aquarium's entrance. A girl got off one and removed her helmet, revealing long dark hair tied up in a pony-tail. "He ought to have been here by now." she said.

A boy got off the other bike. He was black and replaced his helmet with a red beret. He had a number of small boxy items clipped to his belt. He pulled one out now and pushed a slide switch, turning on a bright, LED light. He swung it around them. The light penetrated a good distance into the gloom.

"What, you think Danny was laying in wait for us so he could jump out and scare us?" the girl asked.

"Knowing Danny like I do, I wouldn't put it past him."

"We're on a mission, Tuck. This is hardly the time for games, and Danny knows that!"

"You don't know Danny like I do," the black boy answered smugly.

"Let's look around. Maybe he's in back." the girl suggested and started across the lawn to the side of the building. Like Danny, they were surprised to see the open door on the loading dock at the back of the building, largely because Danny came flying out of the building just as they got there.

He was flying butt-first. Since that wasn't his normal way of flying they scattered to shelter behind some near-by trees. If Danny, who has the power and strength of a ghost was getting his butt kicked, they didn't want to get in it's way.

"Do you think Danny's alright?" Sam asked after a moment.

Tucker shrugged. "I've got an ecto-blaster in the saddlebags on my moped. I'll run and get it," he said.

He looked around the side of the tree to see if the coast was clear and ducked right back as multiple streams of glowing ectoplasm rocketed past.

"I'd say Danny's OK!"

The fighting continued for a few more minutes, oddly quiet except for the zap and sizzle of the ectoplasm bolts and the occasional grunts as the opponents closed in for an exchange of physical blows.

Finally there was a quiet for half a minute. Then a tremendous, lingering crash following by a lot of snapping and crackling. "That can't be good," Sam said and peeked around the side of the tree. "Dang!" she hissed.

"What is it?" Tucker asked.

"Someone knocked over a tree."

"So much for doing this discretely. Anyone hurt?"

"I can't see."

Tucker looked around his side of the tree. A hundred yards off a large oak now lay on its side, roots pointing into the sky like giant fingers. "Come on, Danny, where are you?" he half prayed.

"Right here."

The voice came from behind him. Tucker spun around with a bit of a shriek. "Danny! Don't do that!" he panted. "I think you scared ten years off my life."

"So where's the ghost?" Sam asked, trying to keep her voice level. She didn't want Tucker to know that she's been as spooked by Danny's sudden present as he had been. Goths were all about the cool. She had to keep up appearances.

"It dropped a tree on me and by the time I got out from under it, it had disappeared." Danny explained.

"So what are you going to do," Sam wondered. "Hang around here and hope it shows up again?"

"Maybe for a little bit. But it's a school night and we've got that test coming up. I can't afford to be falling asleep in Mr. Lancer's class tomorrow."

"That'll be a first," Tucker jested.

"Besides I don't thing it's going to be back tonight. Not while I'm here. If it came back it might lead me to its lair and I'm pretty sure that it doesn't want to do that."

"What could be in its lair that's so precious - baby 'gator-head ghosts?" Tucker asked.

"Crocodile." Sam corrected.

"Whatever."

"Ghosts don't have babies, as far as I know, so it wouldn't be that. But there must be something there important to it to fight so fiercely."

"A mate?" Sam suggested.

"Maybe."

"I brought some hot cocoa on my bike. In case we were going stake out this place. Want some?"

"Sounds good." A flash of light followed and Danny Fenton not Danny Phantom followed Sam and Tucker back to there mopeds.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fight Zelda mused as she ran the mascara brush around the edges of her eyes. She batted her eyelids to see if the effect worked. Unfortunately, without her glasses, even with her nose posed six inches from the mirror her face was a vague blur. With a sigh she slipped on her glasses and peered speculatively at her reflection. She knew so little about make-up, unfortunately, that she couldn't be sure about what she saw. It looked wrong but she couldn't tell why. She'd followed the how-to in the teen magazine she kept hidden in the bottom of her suitcase. Was it too much, or not enough. In any case she's gotten a glimpse at the rouge she's applied to her cheeks. She looked like a candy apple. With a sigh, Zelda reached for the cold cream cleanser. Maybe she should break down and ask Phyl for advice...

With a freshly scrubbed face she started again. Foundation to cover her numerous freckles. Blush to cover up the foundation and match the complexion of the rest of her face. Maybe no mascara at all. The effect seemed a lot better than her last try. Zelda was determined to grab Groovy's attention this time. No slobbering dog was going to come between her and her man. At least that was the theory. A deep part of her mind wondered if going after Groovy was setting the bar too low. She could do better, couldn't she? She shook off her doubts and checked her hair. She's spent an hour straightening the kinky mess of her hair. It looked almost decent.

Zelda didn't have much choice in the matter of clothes. She'd packed four sweaters in brown, yellow, orange and grey, four pleated skirts in tan, ocher, gray and black and four pairs of knee socks, white, red, green and blue. It didn't matter how she mixed and matched, she'd still look pretty much like she always did. However a little work with safety pins had turned her yellow sweater into one two sizes smaller. With it on she almost looked like she had boobs. She'd considered attacking the collar of her sweater with a pair of scissors, give herself a bit of cleavage but the idea of chopping up one of her sweaters was a step too far.

Zelda took away the towel she'd wrapped around her neck to protect her clothes, stepped back, and appraised the final results. Alas, a life of reading mysteries instead of Teen Beat left her unsure. Well, it would have to do. With a deep breath she reached for the bathroom door. It was showtime.

Groovy was sitting on one of the beds in the boy's room. He had rented a game console from the hotel and was playing a game - something involving zombies and surfers. The Rottweiler was sprawled on the floor, between the beds, next to him. Zelda hitched herself up on the bed next to Groovy. She let her skirt rise up a little bit more than normal. Boys liked to look at girl's legs, right?

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Fine, fine." Groovy answered without taking his eyes off the game.

"Is the game any good?" she asked. All the advice columns said to show an interest in your boyfriend's hobbies.

"It's OK," Groovy said. So much for that idea.

"Where'd Curtis and Phyl go?" God, thought Zelda, this is lame. She'd never get Groovy's attention at this rate.

Groovy shrugged his shoulders.

"So it's just you and me..." she said huskily.

"Hunh," Groovy grunted. Alphonse sat up for a moment to glare at Zelda. It didn't growl but the dig bared its teeth for a moment before siting back down again.

Zelda humped closer to Groovy just to spite the dog. She slipped an arm through his and leaned against his shoulder. You want to do something. Just the you of us?

I dunno. "How bout we go for a walk, see a bit of the city before it gets too dark?" she asked. "There's a full moon out. I bet the park looks very romantic now..." Did she just say that? Talk about laying it on with a trowel! Then again, Groovy didn't seem to be responding one way or another.

"What do you say?" she prompted after a moment.

"Huh?"

"About going for a walk."

He looked at her confused as ever. She tried batting her eyes, since that's what girls seem to do in these situations. Instead of being taken by her earth-shattering beauty he asked, "You got something in your eyes?" Scratch the eye-battering, Zelda concluded. "No," she denied.

"Something about you looks different" he said, finally pausing his game and looking her in the face. Zelda's heart leaped. Success! Or at least the start towards success.

"Like what?" she hinted. "My hair? I tried straightening it out. I hate it's frizziness."

"Could be." He continued to look at her intently, with a puzzled frown on his face.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I don't know. I guess I've seen you so long with frizzy hair that I'm not used to it being straight. I'm not sure I like it or not."

"Oh." Zelda's hopes were falling again.

"Where's your freckles?" Groovy suddenly asked. "What did you do with them?"

"I covered them up with some make-up. I wanted to see what it was like to not look like a freak all the time."

"You re not a freak. I like your freckles. They gave your face character."

"Really?" He liked her freckles? That sounded good to her.

"You know, Phyl's a great kid and she's really pretty but I never understood why she always put so much make-up her face. I like 'em natural."

"Really?" Zelda was confused. All her research had indicated that boys liked girls who wear make-up. Was her research wrong, or was Groovy different?

"Oh, yeah, I like em natural." Groovy leaned back against the front of the bed, then wrinkled his nose. "What's that smell?"

"Maybe it's my perfume," Zelda said. "I found a complimentary bottle in our room and thought I'd try it. Do you like it?"

"Eww, no. It smells like something crawled up inside a bus exhaust and died."

With great casualness Zelda scratched her nose, really a ploy to sniff the dot of perfume she's put on her wrist. She wasn't sure how much perfume one puts on at a time. Was it a splash or a dotting here and there. The fumes coming off her wrist were pretty strong. Maybe she over did after all. Damn! Another failure in her plan to seduce Groovy.

But as she moved her arm back to her side she caught the whiff of something that smelled like vulcanized eggs.

"Zeld', is that you, did you cut one?" Groovy accused.

"No!" she protested.

"Well, it wasn't me!" He edged away from her.

"Groovy..." Zelda caught a glimpse of the dog sitting on the floor next to Groovy. The dog was going "he...he...he..." like it was trying to cough up a hairball. Was it laughing at her.

She was going to say something more when the door popped open and Curtis stuck his golden-haired head in. "One of our alarms went off!" he shouted. "Come on. Maybe we've caught the monster already!" He dashed away. Groovy, Zelda and the dog raced after him.

Danny Phantom wove a large square around Amity Park's Memorial Park looking for a hint of spectral movement that would be the Kraken. But the monster was keeping out of sight. With a sigh he landed in the parking lot outside the abandoned Aquarium. He spotted Sam and Tucker sitting on a near-by picnic table, changed to Danny Fenton and joined them.

"Nothing, huh," said Sam as she tossed him an apple from her backpack.

Danny shook his head, polishing the apple on his sleeve. "Either's its too early in the night or last night frightened him into hiding out for a while." He took a bite out of the apple then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He flattened it on the picnic table. It was a copy of a street map with several numbered Xs marked on it. The Xs looked scattered at random on the paper but Danny had penciled in a vague spiral which seemed to center on the Aquarium. "I'm guessing he'll attack here," Danny said, pointing to a point beyond the spiral, "only that's the financial district and there's never anyone around after Five."

"You sure he's only trying to scare people away," Sam asked.

"He shows up, throws things around, shouts and stomps around until everyone's run off, then disappears." Danny said. "He doesn't seem to be actively trying to hurt anyone but doesn't care if people do get hurt. And he doesn't seem to be stalking anyone."

"So why is he trying to scare people away?"

Danny shrugged. "I doubt that we ll know until we capture him."

"Well, if he comes out to frighten people, I've got it covered," Tucker announced.

"Uh?" Danny grunted, his mouth full of apple. Sam raised her eyebrows. She had been practicing the trick of only raising one, like Spock, but so far hadn't mastered it.

"I've hooked my computer at home to a police scanner. The audio is being feed into a voice-to-text program and the text is analyzed for key words. Anything pops up I'll get an email alert in my cell phone."

"Cool. But I thought you said voice-to-text programs are really ineffective?" Danny wondered.

"They're getting better, but I don't need exact word-for-word fidelity, just key words like riot or attack or ghost. The analysis program ought to catch anything important."

"So we can just sit around here until something happens?" Sam asked.

"Yeah."

"That sounds boring. Let's go look at that tree the Kraken dropped on Danny last night."

The sun had yet to sink below the hills to the west of Amity Park. It shed mellow rays over the wooded glade as they walk around the Aquarium and the hundred yards beyond to where the tree had fallen. The Parks Dept. had been at work on it already. Most of the smaller limbs had been trimmed off and carted away. Danny supposed they'd have to bring in heavy equipment to cut up and haul away the truck and main branches.

The tree was a good yard across at its base and what remained of the truck was easily forty feet long. It's fall had opened up a good sized hole in the leafy canopy overhead.

"Man," Tucker summed up the feelings of all three. "That tree is huge! And the Kraken just dropped it on you?"

"Well, he sort of pushed it over." This was obvious from the amount of roots still in the ground. Those that had been torn out when the tree fell were thick and ropy. They stuck up in the air like knobby fingers.

"Could you do that?" Tucker asked.

"Oh sure," Danny lied confidently. "Look at all the surface roots. That tree would have fallen over in any good breeze."

That it hadn't fallen over anytime in the last hundred years ought to have negated Danny's assertion.

They walked back towards the Aquarium. Sam remembering that Danny had said there was a door open into the building, wanted to explore. Tucker, who generally tried not to stick his head into rattlesnake pits, was less enthusiastic. Sam left to get some flashlights when Tucker sighed in relief as his phone chirped with an incoming message.

"Police are scrambling to a disturbance at 15th and Miller," he said. "It's a Code G."

"Meaning what?"

"Ghost, of course."

"Miller's not that far away, well within the range of his other attacks. I'll fly there. You and Sam follow on your mopeds for back-up." There was a flash of light as Danny transformed into his ghost self and rocketed into the sky.

Sam arrived just as he was leaving. "Dang!" she swore. "I really wanted to see what the inside of that place looked like." She followed Tucker back to their mopeds.

Miller and 15th was less than a quarter mile away. It was an area on the edge of what Amity Park called their Cultural Center, meaning where the Main Library, the Opera House, several dance clubs and the community college were located. Miller hosted a sting of bars and cafes for people to wet their whistles after a stretch in High Society. Danny followed the screams of fleeing people to the Kraken. It had seized a trash can and was swinging it around like a baton. Danny exploded it with a burst of ectoplasm. He landed and reached for his Fenton Thermos. Flipping the lid open he called out to the monster.

"It's time for you to go back to the Ghost Zone. Terrorizing the mortals may be fun but I can t allow it. Are you going to go peacefully or what?"

For an answer the Kraken seized a pipe railing from an outside cafe, ripped it from the ground and hurled it at Danny. It happened so fast Danny had to duck and roll out of the way. "Why is it that nobody ever want to do things peacefully?" he muttered as he jumped to his feet and threw a blazing loop of ectoplasm over the kraken's head. He pulled the noose tight and tried to haul the creature in. The Kraken stagged a couple feet towards Danny, then found its footing and braked its slide to a halt. For a moment there was a tug-of-war between the two. Then the ectoplasm rope snapped and disappeared in a flare of light.

The Kraken threw a newspaper box at Danny before chasing after some fleeing customers. Danny blocked the box with an ectoplasm shield and scrambled to his feet. He launched himself into the air and rained a stream of fireballs on the monster s back. These seemed to bounce off with little effect.

"Dang!" Danny cursed. It s scaly body was more or less fire-proof.

The Kraken, he realized, tended to stay materialized, unlike a lot of other ghosts who slipped easily between substance and shadow. Maybe, Danny reasoned, he needed to take a more material approach to stopping the ghost.

He circled back to where the pipe railing lay on the ground. He picked it up, marveling on how much heavier and more awkward it was than it had looked when the Kraken had thrown it at him. Danny held it like a bat, choking up until he got a nice balance and took off after the monster. While it was busy shaking a patio table at people, Danny came up behind and swung the railing like a bat, swinging for the bleachers.

The pipe bent around the Kraken, barely knocking it off its clawed feet. The monster turned to face Danny and charged. Danny levitated into the air, over the Kraken's head. He was beginning to think he was in over his head, but if he could face down Vlad Plasmeus or Skulker, Dark Pariah and others, he wasn't going to let some man-gator ghost get the best of him.

The crocodile-headed monster suddenly soared into the air, chasing after Danny. This, Danny thought, was progress, since he could now lead the ghost away from this populated area to some place safer to fight in. He lead a zigzag course towards Memorial Park, keeping just far enough ahead of the creature to be safe but not so far ahead that it lost interest in pursuing him. When they got over the trees Danny turned and laced into the Kraken with a series of rapid-fire, concentrated ectoplasm blasts. The fireballs struck in a tight pattern over its belly. The Kraken roared in pain and charged after Danny with greater speed. Danny dodged and fired again. This time he struck the creature s back, which, clearly was more fire-resistant than his underside.

Danny looped to get under the Kraken and sent another wave of ectoplasm winging its way. The Kraken tried to dodge but couldn't avoid all the blasts. It roared in pain again, then took off to the west, Danny in close pursuit. He continued to send ectoplasm bolts with one hand while holding the Fenton Thermo at ready with the other.

The Kraken dropped under the tops of the trees and tried to lose Danny by whipping around and between the thickly grown trees. The Kraken, seeming unaware it could turn intangible, tried to avoid hitting any trees. Danny followed suit. Suddenly, while taking a turn to cut off the Kraken's course, Danny felt himself run into something like cobwebs. He was going too fast to stop and thought nothing of it. Until a weighted net fell out of the sky, closed in around him and yanked him out of the sky. He fell to the ground with an painful thud, sparks from multiple Ghost Deflectors woven into the net kept him paralyzed.

"W. T. F.!" he groaned before slumping back to the ground, panting.

The gang clattered down a flight of stairs and out the hotel's doors, across traffic and into the park on the other side of the street, then down a long block to the old low Aquarium building.

Overhead someone was playing with fireworks. Streaks of fire, some red, some green shot from one side of the sky to the other. Occasionally a streak would impinge on something invisible and burst into a shower of sparklers. The source of the streaks of fire seemed to move about the sky in erratic sweeping motion. Slowly it dawned on the four that they were watching some sort of firefight in the air between two invisible forces. At least invisible in the twilight gloom. Suddenly one of the fighter unleased a blistering series of blasts while swooping low over the abandoned building. They could hear a low rush of air and feel a breeze as something flew past them.

"Like, what was that?" asked Groovy.

A thud in the distance answered him. Curtis pulled out his cell phone and consulted it. The sprung trap had sent him an email when it was triggered. He pointed out a direction through the grove of trees surrounding the old building. Dimly in a street light could be seen a struggling mass on the ground.

"We did it," Phyllidia called. "We captured the Amity Park monster, and on our first night!"

"Not bad for an improvised trap," Curtis grinned.

"Groovy" said Groovy.

"Get this stuff off me!" an angry voice demanded.

Someone buried under the mess of netting struggled to his feet. Sparks flashed as he wrestled with the netting. Each flash bringing a yelp from the person struggling with the net.

"Let's see who we're got here," Curtis said, pulling a flashlight out of a pocket and shining beam on the net. There was a gasp from the foursome.

Staring at them from within the net was a medium sized boy with white hair and a black jumpsuit. There was a large "D" on his chest. But his eyes visible glowed in the dark a baleful green, and the light from Curtis's flash shone faintly through his transparent body.

"Rowst!" howled Alphonse, who had been sniffing around the edges of the netting and leaped for safety behind Groovy's back.

"Did that dog just talk?" the ghost in the netting asked.

The four kids stared at the ghost boy for a moment while he continued to struggle with the net. Finally he found an edge and quickly pulled it off him. "Whose bright idea was this? I almost had the Kraken but for you meddling - kids!"

The four kids had closed in together but otherwise hadn't moved a muscle. The flashlight shining in his eyes shook nervously.

"What with you guys? You act like you've never seen a ghost before?"

After a moment the shorter girl squeaked, "we haven't?"

"Well, welcome to Amity Park, home of ghosts, ghosts and more ghosts. I'm Danny Phantom."

"You're not the Amity Park Ghost?" the tall blond haired kid asked.

"I am "an" Amity Park ghost. I'm the one trying to put the Kraken back in the Ghost Zone and I almost had him until I ran into your trap."

"Phyl, your idea of tying those ghost deflectors into the net worked! What a great idea." the blond hair kid whispered, seemingly oblivious to Danny as he talked to the taller, smartly dressed girl beside him.

"Who the heck are you, and what are you doing in my town?" Danny called out, demandingly.

"We're the Clew Crew," the blond said. "We go around the tri-state area solving mysteries and uncovering fraudulent supernatural schemes. I m Curtis, This is Phyl, Groovy and Zelda."

"And news of the Kraken brought you here?" Danny asked.

"That and the hidden treasure," the other boy, Groovy, added.

"Treasure?" Danny echoed.

"The treasure that Phineas George stole. The shorter girl filled in.

Phineas George?

The bank robber? the shorter girl said, ending her statement with a rising inflection, as if she was asking a question. He stole $20,000 in gold coin from a local bank, was chased into the Aquarium and was captured when he tried to leave. He didn t have the money on him when he was arrested.

Really. Doesn t ring a bell. When did this happen?

1923.

Ah, that would be before my time. Well, good luck with that treasure thing. I m after the Kraken and if you don t mind, stay the heck out of my way. I m what you might call a professional. he added.

Danny turned and walked away from them. He was furious at them, less for making him lose the Kraken then for embarrassing himself by getting caught in their lame trap. He stopped and looked at the abandoned building speculatively. The open door in the rear was temptingly avalable for ingress. The Kraken was in there. Why it had set up a lair there was a mystery. Somewhere in there was a secret the Kraken was protecting. But what? He wanted to explore it at length but he didn't want these amateurs getting in his way.

"So you're really a ghost?" a voice said beside him.

If he had had a skin, Danny would nearly have jumped out of it. He spun around and found the shorter girl from the Clew Crew standing next to him.

What was she doing here? Danny pointed to his feet. Only he didn t have any at the moment. His body below the waist fainted away into a wisp of smoke.

The girl gasped but failed to run away.

"Shouldn't' you be helping them or something?" he asked, motioning back to where the blond kid - Curtis? - was shinnying up a tree.

"They won't notice I'm gone," she said with a note of finality that made Danny glance at the girl. They never do. He could see a lot better in the dark as a ghost so he could see the sour look on her face.

What s it like being a ghost, she asked.

Danny shrugged. It was a hard question to answer, since he wasn t a full-time ghost nor had he died or gone through any of the usual things that turn the spirits of the dead into ghosts. To avoid further unanswerable questions he answered with a question of his own:

"So you guys hunt ghosts?"

"No, we solve mysteries. The girl said. It's a hobby of ours. I mean we've investigated a lot of ghost sightings but it always turns out to be someone in a costume trying to scare people away so they can commit some criminal act. This is the first time we've actually run into a real ghost."

Danny shook his head. Since he didn't want to just stand there talking to this girl he didn't want to talk to, he started towards the door.

She trotted after him, puppy-dog fashion.

When he looked to his side and found that the girl was still there. Still looking at him with a bright-eyed expression and a smile that seemed almost a rictus. Was she sucking in her guts? Danny noticed. "I ran into the Kraken in there last night. There's a chance he's there again tonight. I'm going in to find him. It could get pretty dangerous in there. You should wait outside."

Danny raised his hand and filled it with a glowing ball of ectoplasm. he was through the door before noticing that the girl was still beside him.

"You can create fire?" she wondered.

"It's ectoplasm. Ghost are made up of ectoplam. It glows when exuded from our bodies. It s not flame."

"Wouldn't this work better?" she said, turning on her flashlight.

Danny was about to explain that he could see better in the dark than a mortal, then decided what was the point.

They went through the small door into the central area of the old building. He checked his breath for frostiness. Nothing. Nothing was setting off his ghost sense. Where ever the Kraken had gotten to, he wasn't here. Still he preferred doing his exploring alone. Since Danny was raised not to tell people to get lost he took the other course and asked "Where you guys from?" Not that he cared, but was just making polite conversation.

"Charity Harbor," she said. "It's in Massachusetts, near Salem. It should be called Despair Mudflats because that's what the harbor looks like most of the time. We do a strong business in Slime Worms and other stuff that grow in the mud but it kind of hurts the tourism business."

"Tourism?"

"Yeah. When the factories closed Charity Harbor took to tourism. Salem got all the attention for their Witch Trials but everyone knows that Charity Harbor had more witches and supernatural events than Salem ever had. We're in the Information Please almanacs as the most haunted place in America."

"And people come to see the ghosts?" Danny was moving slowly down the hall, pausing to read the placards on the many empty or near empty tanks.

"Yes."

"And you never found a ghost there?"

"Nope."

"Must be rough on the tourism."

"Exactly."

He paused at the crossing at the center of the building. "That's where I meet the Kraken last night," he said, pointing to one of the large tanks on the corner of the intersecting halls.

Zelda pushed up her glasses and looked into the corner. "That's where the Kraken attacked me last night," she said in surprise.

"Really?"

"Really! I've got the bruises and everything to prove it. Look!" She pulled up the side of her sweater to show Danny her darkening bruise.

Danny was more embarrassed to see part of her bra than the extent of her bruising. He turned away to inspect the tank the Kraken seemed to be haunting.

It was larger than most of the others and with windows on two sides since it was on the corner of two aisles. There was about six inches of water left in the tank and about a foot of mud. Limestone flags had been piled in the center to form a sort of hill. "Alligator Gar," he read off the placard. "Wonder what kind of fish that was?"

"The Gar is a family of relative primitive fish notably for their bony scales. The Alligator Gar has a long, flat snout filled with lots of tiny sharp teeth, making it look a lot like an alligator. Except it has fins instead of feet."

Danny looked at the girl in surprise.

"I can't help it, she said, clearly embarrassed by spouting off, I like to read."

His mother, Maddie Fenton, was easily the smartest person Danny knew. And his sister could probably teach Freud a thing or two about psychology, so Danny was used to intelligent women, but not women who didn't want people to know they were smart. "So it could be hanging out here because of the family resemblance?" Danny joked, hoping to make the girl feel better.

"Or it could be protecting a nest? Animals get really aggressive protecting their children."

"Ghosts don't have children," Danny said.

"How sad."

"Well, post-life, there's not much need for children." Danny said. "You know, it may not be this tank that it's protecting. It could be that the Kraken doesn't want us to go down either of these two corridors. Why don't we go down this one and see what's there."

Zelda swung her flashlight down the side corridor. It looked like the hall they had already come down: Arched, echoing brick walls, rows of tanks set into the wall, a knee-high center wall running down the center. A couple trash receptacles. That was all.

They walked in silence for a minute.

"So you and your friends go around Charity Harbor exposing all these frauds while the city has been trying to build up the city's reputation as 'the must haunted city in America'?" Danny asked. The girl nodded.

"I bet you're well liked there?

The girl answered with a non-descript grunt.

...And now you're on a road trip to bother someone else."

"You make it sound like they were trying to get rid of us."

Well, weren t they? I mean you look like high schools. Doesn t that make you a little young to be driving across the country on your own? What kind of parents would let their kids do that? Danny was about to add that his parents never would but remembered in time that he was in his ghost form now and as a ghost he had no parents.

I think our parents trust us to do the right thing when we re alone.

That s not what I meant, Danny said. You re going off to look into trouble. Last night you got beat up by the Kraken, but the Kraken doesn t appear to being trying to hurt people, only scare them off. He could have broken bones, maybe even killed you if it had been really vicious. I can t believe any parent would let their kids poke their nose into that kind of trouble. Parents are their to protect their kids. I don t know. It just seems weird that they let you go around doing this stuff.

The girl stopped to look into one of the empty fish tanks. Danny couldn t see anything of interest in it, then noticed that she was blinking rapidly. Trying to stave off tears? He shouldn t have been so rough on her, he decided guiltily. Obviously she enjoyed going off doing this stuff. It wasn t right for him to success that her parents didn t care about her. And it wasn t like Danny hadn t gone behind his parents back at times to go ghost-hunting. He certainly knew the feeling to doing things on his own. Of being his own person. But how to apologize to her?

What makes you think that stolen bank money is here? he asked instead.

The girl cast a swift glance at Danny then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Well, she began, turning around from the fish tank, "According to all the newspaper accounts at the time Phineas George went in here with his bank loot but when he was caught coming out he didn't have any of it on him. He had the empty bank satchel on him but it was empty."

"Surely they looked for it."

"Numerous times."

"And found nothing."

"Not a thing," the girl said.

"What makes you think you'll have better luck than they did?"

"We're pretty good at finding clues that no one else ever noticed."

Danny thought that was pretty egotistical but looking at the girl he couldn't see anything vain or egotistical in her expression.

"So what's it like being a ghost?" the girl asked unexpectedly. You never did answer me before.

Danny had hoped she had forgotten that question. He decided to answer her question with a question. "What's it like being alive?"

"You know... Do you eat, sleep? I don't know, play, have fun, have friends? Do you have a girlfriend?" The last sort of blurted out.

"Are you flirting with me?" Danny asked.

"No! No... I couldn't... I don't know the first thing about flirting," she protested, stepping back from him. Danny suspected her face was beat-red at the moment.

They were at the end of the corridor, about to turn back the way they came. There was a fire exit door on the end wall. A sign there warned that an alarm would sound in the door was opened.

As they paused before making the return journey Danny realized that he liked this girl. She was short and dumpy, wore horribly ugly black rimmed glasses but she was smart, like Sam, Independent, like Sam, she had a subtle sense of humor, like Sam. He didn t recognize her was wounded emotionally or that in that she was also a lot like Sam. She had been flirting with him, even though he was in his ghost form. Who wouldn t like a girl who was flirting with them?

Let me show you something I can do that you can't," Danny suggested, embarrassed that he had embarrassed the girl. "Take my hand."

He held out his hand and she tentatively came closer and touched it. Danny closed his fingers around hers and exerted intangibility along his arm and through her body. He floated off the ground a little and as she gasped to find herself in the air, floated through the closed door and out into the moonlit night. There were some cement steps leading down from the building. Danny settled down there, returned to materiality and sat down, pulling her down with the hand he still held.

"You walked through that wall!" she gasped.

"And we flew. If only just a few feet. As long as we touch I can make you invisible, intangible, and weightless."

"Oh! my! god!"

"Neat trick, eh?"

"Oh, you have got to fly me to the moon!"

"I can't fly that high. But I could take you up a couple miles. It gets kind of cold up there, though."

She was going to say more when she heard someone calling her name. "I'd better get back," she said reluctantly. "My friends are calling. Usually when they notice I'm not around it's because I've been kidnapped. i don't want them to worry."

"Sure," Danny agreed and stood up. As he did so he noticed that his breath had suddenly turned to fog. His ghost sense! He looked u just in time to see a black featureless figure push against a statue built into the roof of the building. "Look out!" he shouted as it began to fall directly on them. He give the girl a hard shove while he rolled out of the way in the other direction. Instincts die hard and in the panic of the moment Danny forgot that he could have turned intangible.

The masonry hit the ground with a hard smack, shattering on the steps they had been sitting on moments before. Zelda screamed as she tumbled down the steps.

Danny zoomed up to the roof but whoever had pushed the statue was already gone. That was fast, he thought. He wondered if it had been the Kraken?

He flew back to the ground. By that time the other members of the Clew Crew and run up. "Zelda," the surfer kid was shouting. "Like, where are you?"

"Here!" a muffled voice came from somewhere in the darkness.

"Zelda?" the blond called out, shining his flashlight in the direction her voice had just come.

"Curtis?" The voice seemed to be coming from the tangle of rosebushes in the corner of the building.

"Zelda?" he repeated.

Oh God, it s horrible! Zelda exclaimed from within the rose bushes. How did I get in here? Can you get me out?

Uh Curtis looked at the overgrown mass of thorny bushes. There didn t appear to be any way through except by tearing through the tangle.

"I'll get her," Danny said, went intangible and walked into the mass of thorny bushes. He found Zelda a moment later - at the bottom of what must have once been a reflecting pool. There were cement walls keeping the roses from encroaching and a three foot drop into a foot of water and an unknown depth of mud. Zelda looked like a drowned rat and was a mad as a cat getting a bath.

"Why did you push me in here!" she shouted.

"I pushed you out of the way of a falling statue. I didn't mean to push you in here. In fact I don t think I pushed you hard enough to fall in here. Come on, take my hand and I'll get you out of here."

She looked at him resentfully before putting her hand in his. Danny went intangible and floated them out of the muddy reflecting pool and through the torn bushes to where her friends were anxiously waiting. Phyllidia whispered an oh my god, as she saw Zelda float through the rose bushes, inches above the ground.

"What happen? Curtis wanted to know, so Danny explained about the falling statue.

"Was it the Kraken?" Phyllidia wanted to know. Danny had to admit that he wasn't sure.

Just then Alphonse wandered in. Danny was surprised to realize that the dog hadn't been with the others before now. The dog race up to Zelda and sniffed her reeking, mud soaked skirt before trotting back to Groovy, turning around and looking her way again, the dog barked, ruff-ruff-ruff, almost like it as laughing.

They went over to look at the fallen statue. It had left a spiderweb of cracks on the steps where it had landed. Had the Kraken pushed the statue over to fall on him, even knowing he was a ghost? The Kraken tended to favor physical attacks. Or had it pushed the statue onto the girl, Zelda? Had it tried to kill her or just scare her? Looking at the path she took falling into the rose bushes had Danny wondering, too. It was just too far for her to have stumbling from his push. He hadn't pushed that hard, even though, as a ghost, his strength was greater than normal.

Danny went to find Zelda. She was dabbing at her face with a hand wipe and a bottle of water that Phyllidia had fished out of her purse. She tried to brush as much of the muck from the pond off her clothes and had left a sizeable pile of it in a circle around her. As she wiped her face Danny noticed freckles coming out on his skin, like some sort of magic anti-eraser. It took him a moment to realize that they had been hidden under make-up.

"After I push you out of the way, did you feel any other ghostly presence?" he asked.

"God, I must look like a mess."

"At least you re not bleeding," Phyllidia offered. "Oh wait, you've got blood all over your arms..."

Zelda looked like she was on the edge of tears. Danny didn't have any ideas what to do about that so he pressed on with his question. She gave her arms a disgusted shake, dislodging yet more gunk. "How should I know, she snapped. I was too busy trying not to land on my face!

Did you feel a second push or something?

Zelda put down the filthy wipe and turned an angry face at Danny. After an long moment she answered. Maybe. I don;t know. I was getting my balance when I did seemed to trip over something, but maybe I was pushed instead and that's what carried my over to the bushes."

"Did you see anything?"

"it all happened so fast." she complained. "Wait, it seemed like for an instant while I was being pushed something blotted out the stars."

"What did it look like?"

"Nothing. It was just a dark blot."

"No scales, no crocodile's teeth or any of that stuff?" Danny wondered.

"I'm sure I would have remembered that if whoever pushed me had had them."

Zelda wiped what mud she could off her glasses and put them back on. She looked around at where the statue had fallen, saw the size of the statue laying there a few feet away from the stairs. It was nearly as big as she was. It took a moment for it to sink in then suddenly her knees trembled, she wobbled a bit then flung herself on Danny, mud and all, clinging with her arms around his neck. With a sob she whispered, You saved me!

Danny caught her around the waist to hold her up. As he pulled her up she tightened her grip around his neck. Just as he was thinking things were getting out of hand he heard a singular question, in stereo.

Who s that girl! two people asked at the same time. Danny looked to Curtis who was the louder, closer voice. He was pointing to the parking lot where Sam, perched on her moped, was staring at Danny. She looked shocked and outraged.

This can t get any worse, Danny thought. Then Zelda kissed him. 


	3. Chapter 3

What the heck is going on," Sam Manson demanded as she jerked down the kickstand of her scooter and stalked towards Danny. "I have been driving up and down these streets for the last hour looking for you, looking for the Kraken, trying to do my part in all this and what do I find? I find you kanoodling with some - some - mud-encrusted bimbo!"

"Sam, it's not what it looks like!" he called.

"It's exactly what it looks like!" she declared.

"Who are you calling a bimbo?" Zelda said, finally letting Danny loose as she turned to confront Sam. "I am not some bimbo, you faux Goth wannabe."

"Faux? I'll give you faux, right up your fat-"

"Sam!" Danny interrupted.

"I am not fat!" Zelda yelled.

Danny gave Zelda a glare with his green eyes. She stopped and shivered at the balefulness of their gleam. Danny turned them on Sam. Sam was a lot more used to the creepy aura Danny projected as a ghost, but even she found his stare unnerving.

"Zelda, this is my friend, Sam Manson. She helps me when I'm chasing ghosts. Sam this is Zelda - I'm sorry, I don't know your last name."

"Gaines, Zelda Gaines."

"You were kissing a girl you didn't ever know her name?"

"Sam, will you get over it! I wasn't kissing her, she was kissing me."

"And that makes it different?"

Danny sighed and covered his eyes with his hand, only to realize that they were covered in mud. He tried to clean them off on the leg of his jumpsuit but found that just as muddy.

"Ef You" Zelda said. "Ef the lot of you. I've had the worst day of my life. I was nearly killed, thrown into a briar patch and if it wasn't for Danny, would have sliced to pieces trying to get out. Yes, I kissed him, and I'd do it again. Danny's been the only decent thing to happen to me all day." She spun and would have kissed Danny again, but he caught her shoulders and held her off. "Let's not and say we did," he suggested.

"But-? Never mind. I'm going to get cleaned up. I hope I can see you again Danny. I've got so many questions I want to ask." Zelda started walking across the parking lot in front of the abandoned Aquarium.

"Zelda, where are you going?" Curtis asked.

"Back to the hotel."

"They'll never let you in looking like that."

"They'd darn well better. I've got a room them and I plan to use it!

"But what about the mystery - the treasure."

"Ef the treasure!"

Curtis had followed her into the parking lot. He tried to get her to stop by grabbing her shoulder but couldn't bring himself to touch the layer of festering mud that covered it. "Wait. Look, there's extra clothes in the van and some towels. You can clean yourself up there and then we'll give this place the sort of thorough inspection it deserves. Why I bet we'll find that missing treasure tonight. What do you say?"

"I want to go home, Curtis. I plan to take a hot bath, call a cab and drive back to Charity harbor."

"Do you have any idea how much a cab would cost?" Curtis asked, distracted for the moment from his plan of treasure hunting by the thought of money wasted.

"It would be worth it!" Zelda declared.

"Come on. Tell you what: help us tonight look for the treasure and if we don't find it, we'll all go home tomorrow. How about that? Deal?"

"I'm so tired of being the one all the bad stuff happens to. In just the last month I have been shot at, pushed into three separate wells, knocked down four ravines, locked into I don't know how many rooms and now someone tried to drop a statue on me. It's too much, Curtis."

"We'll stay together this time. No more splitting up. We'll be there to protect you. ... And I'm sure that Danny Phantom fellow will hang around to. What do you say? Just one more night?"

"Alright. Alright, just one more night, then we go home. And after that the only clues I'm dealing with are in the crossword puzzles!" She changed course and headed towards the hippie decorated microbus.

Curtis headed back to the others. "She's going to clean up in the van and joining us looking over the building," he said, sliding over the other promises he'd made her.

Arms crossed, boot tapping nervously, Sam demanded, "Well, Romeo, you going to introduce me to the rest of these people."

"Well, they say they're the Clew Crew and go around solving mysteries."

"And hunting treasure," Groovy interjected,

"Yeah. I noticed it written all over that Microbus out there. Did someone ever tell you you misspelled 'clue?'"

"Oh, No," explained Curtis. "Up through the 1930s clue was frequently spelled c-l-e-w. We decided to use that on the Clewmobile because it matched up with 'crew'. We used the overlapping "w's and everything."

"You know, when you have to explain a joke it's no longer a joke," Sam cracked.

"Anyway, the blond is Curtis, the girl is Phyl-something..." Danny began making introductions.

"Phyllidia Cosgrove, please to meet you." the brunette said, extending a hand to Sam. Sam didn't take it.

"And the beatnik with the dog is Groovy."

"Groovy," Sam mocked, "but where's the dog?"

Danny looked around and could not find the dog anywhere. "I wonder where he wandered off to. It's a large Rottweiler. Seems rather scared of me, for some reason."

"Because you're a ghost, maybe?" Dogs were often leery of Danny in his ghost form. Sam grabbed Danny's hand and pulled him off into the shadows under the trees. "We've got to talk," she explained.

"If it's about kissing Zelda, I swear..."

"I don't care who you kiss. It's not like we're boyfriend-girlfriend."

"That weird because just a moment ago you seemed to be all bent out of shape because someone you don't care about was kissing someone you don't care about."

"Oh shut up and tell me about these people and what you've been doing for the last hour. You could at least have called if you were calling off the hunt for the Kraken!"

"I was chasing the Kraken until I ran into one of their stupid traps. It had Ghost Deflectors tied into it so I was stuck. Then I thought that since I'd been attacked by the Kraken in the Aquarium last night it might still be there, so I went in to take a look, and for whatever reason this Zelda girl stuck to me like glue. Turns out she was attacked by the Kraken in there last night, too. Apparently some time before I got there. And at the same location, too. So I'm pretty sure I have its lair staked out, I just don't know why it wants to live in some muck filled fish tank inside an abandoned Aquarium."

"You could have called."

"I should have. I'm sorry. Where's Tucker?"

"He went home. Got tired of running around looking for you and decided to call it a night. I should have gone with him."

"Sam, I am so sorry about not calling you," Danny apologized again.

"You had me worried half-sick," Sam complained. "Who knew what had happened to you. You could have been killed or injured and ... and... you've not invincible, you know."

"Oh, come on. Nothing is going to happen to me," Danny assured her. "Certainly not tonight with those bozos running around. They said they came down to look into the mystery of the ghost haunting the Aquarium but seem more interest in some story about a treasure hidden in there.

"Treasure?" 

Danny was explaining about the bank robbery, the $20,000 in missing gold coins and how the robber had to have left the money in the Aquarium when suddenly there was a cry from the parking lot. The Clew Crew was jumping up and down, waving for him to come. Danny leaped into the air and speed towards them, Sam running after.

"What..." he began then stopped when he saw the so-called "Clewmobile" rocking and shaking and bouncing on its wheels like a tricked out low-rider. "That not normally, is it?" he asked.

"No," Curtis whispered in shocked disbelief.

"My car, my beautiful car," Groovy was crooning.

"Zelda still in there?" Sam asked with remarkable practicality..

Phyllidia nodded.

"Zelda! We're coming!" Groovy called and started running towards the microbus.

"If this van's a rocking, don't come a knocking..." Danny began.

Sam punched him, "shut up and do something," she ordered.

Danny flow towards the bouncing minivan. Groovy was trying to grab hold of one of the door handles and was yanked high into the air by the van's bounces. He dropped free and scrambled out of the way as the van crashed back down with a large "bang" from its shocks flattening out.

Danny could hear Zelda screaming inside as well as seeing a faint glow of ectoplasm stretched across the vehicle. A ghost was clearly trying to possess the van. He tried sliding through the ectoplasm to rescue Zelda but the film proved too strong a barrier.

Danny tried to burn a hole in the ectoplasm with a few well placed fireballs but they, too, bounced off, without damaging the ectoplasmic coating.

He flew around to the windshield, trying at least to see who was inside the van. If it was someone he knew he could, perhaps reason with them. But all he saw was a large ill-defined dark blur sitting in the driver's seat. There was a moment of demonic laughter then the engine ground to a start and the van fell to the ground and lurched forward, running over Danny!

Danny floated out of the ground where he had been pushed when the car struck him. He spotted the microbus racing around the parking lot there, trying to run over a fleeing Groovy. Either the ghost couldn't shift out of first gear or wasn't trying hard since the lanky kid was able to just stay ahead of the van. Coming round near the Aquarium Groovy took off into the grass but the van just bumped over the curb of the sidewalk and chased after the rest of the Clew Crew. Curtis and Phyllidia split up and the car followed after Phyllidia.

Danny zoomed into the air and fashioned a lasso of ectoplasm. He threw it around the rampaging car and pulled up on it. He got it a little bit into the air before the van twisted around to point back to the parking lot. He tried to pull the van entirely off the ground but it wouldn't stay balanced. Abruptly the lasso slipped off the van, dropping the front end with a crash. It rocketed out into the parking lot while Danny was flung high into the sky from the recoil.

He got back just as the Van slide around to a stop and headed back towards the abandoned Aquarium. He tried getting in front of it and pushing back against its movement. He could hear the motor racing as it powered past his resistance. After a minute he had to give up and let the van surge past him. He could see it aimed for Phyllidia who had climbed the steps on the side entrance to the old building and was trying to get in the locked door. Danny raced pass the possessed Clewmobile and grabbed Phyllidia from the steps just moments before the van crashed heavily against the side of the stairs. The was a brief clatter as something broken in the engine, then it stopped. The faint glow that only Danny could see disappeared and a featureless blob rushed away into the night. Danny gave chase but the ghost quickly disappeared. After a moment's futile searching he returned to the steps of the Aquarium.

The van was totalled. The front end collapse to half it's original length. Both the passenger and side doors were crumpled and crushed in place. Groovy and Curtis was struggling with the rear door but it, too, was jammed, perhaps by the twisting of the car's frame. Danny grabbed hold of the door handle and applied his greater ghostly strength. He stopped when he felt the handle giving while the door remained jammed.

"You got a crowbar in your scooter's toolbox?" he asked Sam.

She shook her head. "You're a ghost. Since when do you need a door?" She told him.

Danny stopped struggling with the handle, turned intangible and drifted through the door. He found Zelda lying on the floor half way under the back bench. She was moving slowly and groaning so he assumed she was OK and stuck he head through the door and said as much.

He pulled his head back inside the van and hastily looked around but couldn't find any evidence of the other ghost. There were no keys in the ignition so he assumed it had used other means to get the engine started. He went back to Zelda who was beginning to get up. She had gotten as far as taking off her sodden sweater and trying to towel the muck out of her hair. It stood out in various points and wads like embryonic dreadlocks. When he called her name she quickly crossed an arm over her bra and fumbled around on the floor with the other, looking for her glasses.

As she was looking Danny said, "I'm going to have to float you out of the van. It's been totalled and it looks like all the doors are jammed. Curtis said there were some extra clothes in here. You want to get them on."

Zelda found her glasses and put them on but remained seated on the floor and started crying. "He said there would be towels in here. There was one tiny towel. I couldn't get the dirt out of my hair, or off my face, or arms, or... And here's his 'extra clothes'!" She held up a large jumpsuit.

"Is that orange?" Danny asked.

"Sid's Army-Navy Surplus. I'll look like an escapee from "World's Dumbest Criminals'..."

"Look, I got an idea. It's a little trick I learned I could do. It'll help...but you won't like it."

"Why?"

"I'd rather not say. Just trust me it will get all the dirt off you." Danny looked around the van. "Stand over here," he directed, pointing her to an open space in the back of the van. "Kind of crouch down. We're going to levitate a few inches and you can't be touching any part of the van.

He took the jumpsuit from her and ran the zipper all the way down the front. "Let's put this some place convenient..." Danny glided past her and laid the opened on the back of the second row of seats in the van. He moved passed her again to the back of the van. Facing away from her he stretched out his hand. "Take my hand."

"Why are you looking out the window?"

"You don't want to know. OK, I'm going to levitate us a little bit. You ok? You're not touching any part of the van because that will mess things up. And remember the instant you let go of my hand you'll fall to the floor."

"I'm fine, not touching anything. What's this trick of yours?"

And like that Danny disappeared - leaving behind a faint shadow of himself, a microscopically thin layer of dirt and mud that had been ground into his jumpsuit. After a second the dirt shadow of Danny collapsed and fell to the floor.

Zelda also disappeared, leaving behind a larger outline of her body, composed of all mud, rotten leaves and fetid water covering her body. - and all her clothes! They fell with a wet plop to the van's floor.

Danny and Zelda reappeared a moment later. Zelda took one look at her suddenly naked body, screamed and jerked her hand from Danny's grip as she tried to cover her privates. She hit the floor of the van with a thump.

"Where's my clothes?"

"You're probably standing on them."

Zelda looked at her feet and saw that Danny was right. Bra, skirt, panties, socks and shoes were laid out on the floor of the minibus as if she had been raptured right out of them. Which, in a way, she had. "Don't turn around!" She ordered as she grabbed for the coverall Danny had set near her. She struggled into it, finally pulling the zip up to her neck.

"That was a dirty trick to play on me!" the girl snapped.

"I know. I said you wouldn't like it but I did got all the dirt off you," Danny said, finally turned around. He assumed from the sound of the zipper that she was decent now. "Check your hair if you don't believe me."

Zelda ran her hand through her hair. Looked at it, then ran her hand through it again. As Danny had said, the mess of filth that had clotted up in it was gone. She tried to look at her hands and arms but it was too dark in the van to see. She ran her hands over her face, though and marveled at how smooth and soft it felt. Even the make-up she had had on was gone. "How did you do that?" she asked, somewhat mollified

"I'd rather not say. I made a solemn promise to never talk of this again."

"Oh, come on. You just did it to me. I, at least, deserve an explanation. I'm in whatever fraternity this other person you made a promise to - oh, wait, it was that Goth girl, wasn't it. You disappeared her clothes, too, didn't you?"

"I discovered one day," Danny began,, ignoring her other question, " that I could control how far I could extend my intangibility. When I'm touching someone I can extend intangibility to them and to whoever they're touching. But I could also limit it to how many people I wanted to, otherwise the whole world would become intangible, which doesn't seem like a good idea."

Zelda had edged around the pile of muck and clothes to pull a pair of sandals from an open box in the back. She sat down to pull them on and adjust the buckles so they'd fit. "So how does this help you disappear my clothes?" she asked.

"I didn't 'disappear' them. I made you intangible but not them, and all the dirt that was on you. It's kind of a philosophical question, of what's you and what's not you. Everything that you think of as 'not you' stayed tangible and fell to the floor."

"How do you know what's me and what's not-me?" Zelda asked, looking at Danny with a puzzled expression. "Do you read my mind or something?"

"Mind reading? No. I can't explain it. I don't understand it myself. Maybe a super ghost scientist like Jack Fenton could but I'm just a kid. I realized I could do it, but - it's like walking. You how to do it, but you don't know how you're doing it."

"Couldn't you have just extended this intangibility to my clothes but not the dirt?

"Sorry."

"Then how come your clothes stayed on when mine didn't?" Zelda demanded.

"Sam asked the same que-" Danny stopped before he could say any more and switched to a different answer. "I don't know. Maybe because this jumpsuit fits me pretty tight, maybe because I was wearing this jumpsuit when I became a ghost so I tend to think of it was part of my identity, or maybe I have a better sense of discrimination between what's me and mine then I do over other people.

Zelda stood up and took a tentative couple steps in the sandals, then bent over and pulled her grimy bra out of the pile on the floor. "Well, do you think you could try again with my bra?"

"It won't work. I've tried. It either become intangible dirt and all or stays tangle, dirt and all."

"Just try it."

"What's wrong with your bra? It looks pretty clean to me."

"Are you nuts? I was soaked to the skin by the muck that was in that pool in the rose bushes. This thing is soaked in swamp water. I don't even plan to try to clean up any of these clothes. I'm just going to burn, they're so disgusting. But I need a bra. Please tell me you can clean this up."

Danny was about to ask why she "needed" a bra that badly then decided that perhaps it was something boys - and ghosts - were not meant to know. Gingerly he took the bra, closed his eyes and concentrated. He concentrated for a long time before finally disappearing. The bra remanded where he had been holding, then dropped with a wet plop to the floor.

Danny reappeared. "Sorry." he said. "I tried to feel it in my hand but-" he splayed his hands in frustration. "What's the problem anyway? You're covered by the jumpsuit."

"You wouldn't understand. Us full-figured women kind of need bras, OK?"

Danny shrugged his confusion. Curtis could be heard banging on the back door. Groovy was there, too, though worrying in inarticulate groans. Danny held out his hand. "Ready?"

"You're not going to make my clothes disappear again?" she asked cautiously.

"No, no!" Danny was surprised by her question. "I would never do something like that to embarrass you. Believe me I learned my lesson with Sa - this other person - and she wouldn't talk to me for a week even after I apologized. And I wasn't trying to play a prank on her, either."

Zelda held out her hand, felt herself float up into the air and drift through the steel frame of the wrecked van.

The moment her feet touched the ground Phyllidia flung her arms around her in a hug.

"What were you doing in there that took so long," Curtis asked suspiciously.

"She was pretty banged up, you know. We waited until she felt better before coming out," Danny explained. He looked around for Sam, didn't see her but noticed Groovy dancing around with Alphonse, crying "who's a god boy."

"Looks to me you help her clean up," Sam said from behind Danny's back. Her voice was so unexpected that Danny half-jumped in surprise. "You didn't happen to show her any little tricks you promised never to do again?"

"I thought we promised to never speak of it again."

"And I bet you watched every minute of it, you little pervert."

"No, Sam, I had my eyes shut the whole time. I'm not that kind of guy."

"A likely story."

"It's the truth.

"Whatever."

Sam walked over towards the Clew Crew who were still peppering Zelda with questions about her experience. As Danny watched her go, he noticed that the dog was worming its way into the group and jumped on top if the red-head. Though it was a big enough dog to easily place its paws on her shoulders it looked like it made an effort for its paws to land on Zelda's chest. Her breasts actually, as the girl cried out in pain on the impact of the paws on them. She tried to push him away. She eventually turned around, forcing the dog's feet to slide to the ground. It trotted away with the stump of its tail wagging excitedly. Danny could hear it growl a distinctive "Rubba rubba." Then it caught sight of Danny, sighed a "rut rho" and ran away. Danny watched speculatively as it run away.

"We're going inside the Aquarium," Sam interrupted his thought. "You coming?"

"Sure." Danny considered that the Kraken may still be wandering somewhere outside the old brick building but after their earlier fight in the evening he doubted that it was still hanging around. But if the Kraken had targeted Zelda for some reason, as seemed the case, then he ought to stay close to her so he could protect her the next time it attacked.

At the back of the building Curtis suggested they split up into groups, violating he promise to Zelda to stay together in one group. Curtis, Phyllidia and Groovy would take one side of the building with Zelda, Danny and Sam the other.

"Wow, my own harem!" Danny thought as they entered through the service door on the loading dock. "Of course, looking from Sam to Zelda and back he decided not to mention it to them.

They filed through the open door into the dusty loading dock, flicking on their flashlights as they left the bright rays of the full moon for the obscurity of the enclosed room.

Sam was carrying a five cell Maglight. She liked to tell people she bought it at a police auction and point to a dent on the rim of the heavy metal case as where a cop had killed a man once by hitting him too hard with the light. Danny suspect Sam had just dropped the light once and made up the story afterwards.

Walking next to Zelda Danny had noticed that something about her was different. He realized it was her hair which had turned into a frizzy helmet, almost like a afro.

"What happened to your hair?" he asked as they poked among the collapsing pallets along their side of the building.

Zelda touched her hair in disgust. "This is how it normally looks. I spent hours tonight night trying to straighten it and one bath in mucky water later it's like this."

"It doesn't look that bad."

"You don't have to live with it like I do. - Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, what with you being dead and all."

Danny ran his fingers through his white hair. It pretty much always laid where he wanted it. He could never understand the hours his sister, Jazz, would spend on her hair. He shrugged it off as some kind of girl thing.

"I may be a ghost but that doesn't mean I'm dead." he told her, thinking it was pretty funny. Then worried that perhaps he was telling her too much about his unique nature. Or worse, might be interpreted as flirting. Danny wasn't clear on the subject of flirting, so he tried to avoid it least he say something crude instead of funny.

Zelda smiled at him in a friendly manner. Sam, who was a short distance away, overheard them and flashed Danny a scowl.

"Where does this door lead to?" Sam called out a moment later. She directed her flashlight at a old wooden door set in a wall near the outside wall of the building.

Danny peered at an old metal sign screwed to the door. It was brass with raised lettering that spelled out "Employees Only"

"Maybe its a bathroom?" Zelda suggested.

"Only one way to find out." Sam said and grabbed the doorknob.

"It's probably locked," Danny suggested.

"Nope." Sam pushed the door open. They gathered around the open and shone their flashlights inside. "Alice," Sam quipped, "we are through the looking glass."

They were looking at the backside of the Aquarium operations. This was a long, narrow room where the various displays on the the other wise of the wall were obviously fish tanks, metal walled away from the public, mounted on stout cast iron legs resting on the concrete floor. There was a catwalk built along the tanks to give access for the workers. The catwalk was a bit over waist high to Danny. Workers were probably about waist high to the tanks as well.

On the other side of the room, along the outside wall were a series of tables, some filled with smaller aquarium tanks, others work spaces or desk tops. Occasional cabinets sat between the tables, filled, from what Danny could see, with old, arm-length gloves and tall boots. For working inside the displays Danny supposed.

Pipes came up out of the floor under the fish tanks. Danny bent over to look at them more closely. He knew in his parent's lab all the different pipes for water, air, gas, etc had to be color-coded so First Responders could instantly identify what each pipe carried. But these pipes either were put in so long that people hadn't started color-coding them, or the paint had corroded off. One pipe looked like copper, which Danny assumed was a water line. A smaller steel pipe confused him until he guessed that it was compressed air for the fish tank aerators. One pipe was mounted to the center of the tank. Danny supposed that was a drain. There were a couple more pipe whose use Danny couldn't guess.

"You know, there must be a basement under here," he said straightening up. He was careful to avoid whacking his head on the cast iron catwalk surrounding the tank. But as he straightened up he found himself looking at some tightly stretched fabric. Zelda was on the catwalk, bent over, looking into one of the tanks. The worn, orange one-piece, obviously designed for a boy, was struggling to contain the girl's wider hips.

With a blush Danny spun around . "Sorry." He apologized.

Zelda, head deep in the mostly empty aquarium, barely heard him. "Huh?" she said.

Danny looked over to where Sam was poking through some papers left on one of the desks. The whole placed looked like it had been evacuated in the middle of the day, locked up and simply abandoned as is. She was looking at him and quietly laughing.

"Zelda," Danny began, "have you - uh - ever given consideration to the - uh - advantages of - uh - wearing blue jeans?" Danny began. "With your history of falling into rosebushes, rolling down ravines, tripping on curbs and such - uh - uh - jeans would do a lot to protect you from all these scraps and abrasions you've got. And stuff..."

Zelda walked over to the railing beside Danny. She looked down at him. He was studiously looking elsewhere. "What are you getting at? What's wrong with wearing a skirt. I look too much like a boy to go around dressed like one as well."

"I was just thinking that - bent over that tank - that if you were still wearing that skirt you had on earlier tonight there would be - uh -" Danny opened his mouth but could not think of what to say, how to phrase it delicately. "There might be more than one full moon out tonight."

"You're saying my skirt's too sort?" Zelda began, defensively.

"No, no. Just when you're bending over, or, I don't know, climbing a ladder."

"What's it to you what clothes I wear. I don't need a fashion lesson from some dead guy!"

This pissed off Danny, who had only been trying to be helpful. "I was just saying, OK. You've probably given those guys more panty shots than Japanese anime." Danny blushed in embarrassment. He hadn't meant to be that crude about the thing.

"They never said anything about it to me." Zelda protested.

"Maybe they were enjoying the scene."

"Perverts!"

"Probably." Danny wasn't happy at the direction the conversation was taking. It always seemed that no matter what he did, he always got it wrong. Try not to act like a perv and he gets accused of being one anyway.

"Sorry. I didn't mean anything. It's probably just my over-active imagination." he apologized and hurried on to the next fish tank. But Zelda followed him on the catwalk.

"I've worn skirts all my life. It's what I feel most comfortable in. Do you ever wear anything besides that dumb jumpsuit?"

"It's not the same," Danny began then stopped since he could hardly explain that the jumpsuit appeared when he went ghost and turned into his regular school clothes when he turned back to normal. "It's kind of like my skin. I can't take it off even if I wanted to."

After an awkwardly long silence Danny added, "I was just saying that long pants and long sleeve shirts would do a lot to protect you from getting all scratched up. It's like when a guy has a problem with tripping over his own two feet, maybe he shouldn't go running with knives."

"What are you guys whispering about?" Sam asked, unexpectedly behind Danny's back. "How you're going to divide up this alleged treasure? Or has Danny been flirting with you, again?"

"I don't flirt!" Danny protested.

"Maybe you should."

"I'm going to look at stuff over here," he announced, putting some distance between him and what appeared to be two girl conspiring against him.

"His heart's in the right place. Assuming ghosts have hearts," Sam explained.

"You've known him long?"

"It seems like ages, yeah. So, what were you talking about that was leaving him so red in the face?"Sam asked.

"He blushes more than any boy I know if?" Zelda conceded.

"He's young and innocent. I want to keep him that way. Makes people nicer. I heard the word pants. what's that all about?"

Zelda squatted down on the catwalk so she'd be closer to Sam's height. "He was saying I shouldn't wear skirts."

"O-k-a-y?" Sam hesitated. "Mind, the first time I saw you, you seemed to be wearing mostly muck. I thought Danny had maybe captured Swamp-Thing."

"Ugh. Don't remind me. But , yes, I was wearing a skirt and sweater under all that - that -filth."

"So why don't you wear pants? You seem to have a rather rough and tumble lifestyle going here."

"Promise you won't tell anyone this, OK?"

"My lips are sealed."

"It's a cheerleader's outfit."

"You're a cheerleader."

"No. I just wanted to be one so bad. all my life that I started wearing the skirts and sweaters, thinking if I felt more like a cheerleader I'd compete better during auditions. It didn't work, but I got in the habit of wearing pleated skirts and big knit sweaters.

Zelda sat down on her haunches and folded her knees across each other. She looked to be on the verge of crying. "They always said I wasn't coordinated enough. Of course they had to say some like that because if they said I was too fat or ugly, could be seem as discrimination and they could be sue for it. Since coordination is sort of a job requirement they can get away with saying that. Every year since sixth grade I've try out and every year they turned me down. I don't know why I continue..."

"Don't let other people define who you are," Sam said after a moment. "Look at me. I'm a Goth. You know why?"

"Because inwardly you're depressed and morbid?"

"No, because it pisses off my parents. They kept telling me what I had to be, what I had to do. So I became a Goth, I dress like I want, I do what I want as much to spite them as to please me. So if you want to be a cheerleader, then be the best darn cheerleader you can!" Sam was ranting. After a moment she calmed down and added, "the depression and feelings of self-loathing go without saying." After a moment Sam added, "Let's see what Danny's found,"

She lead the way down the long narrow room to where Danny was rooting around in a locker. "Oh, by the way, cheerleaders wear shorts under their skirts. So they won't give the pervs any jollies when they do their backflips."

"And the blue jeans?"

"Danny made some good points about pants, but don't let that keep you from being who you are. But I definitely would add the shorts."

"I can't believe Curtis or Groovy never mentioned that my skirts were riding up. What a bunch of perverts. - But you know who the biggest perv in the group has to be - Alphonse!"

"Who's a prev?" Danny asked, having only heard the last part of Zelda's conversation.

"Alphonse."

"The Rottweiler?" Danny looked at Zelda dubiously.

"I can't go to the bathroom without him butting his way into the room. And he's always watching me dress or undress."

"He's just a dog. He's just showing you his affection."

"Then why is it every time I look at him I feel like I'm looking into the eyes of some 90 year old pervert?"

"You think the dog's haunted."

"Of course not. There's no such thing as gho-" Zelda paused, embarrassed.

"That's OK, I often don't believe I exist either." Danny joked.

"So what did you find?" Sam asked, changing the subject.

"The basement!" Danny pointed to an hole in the floor. A railing around three sides indicated that it was a purposeful opening. Steep cement steps lead down into the murky depths.

"Let's see what's there," Sam suggested. "Since the Kraken could be down there I suggest Danny goes first."

Danny gathered some ectoplasm in his hand and made it glow brightly since neither Sam nor Zelda were going to let go of their flashlights. The glow was enough for his ghost-enhanced eyes. His breath never turned to fog so Danny was petty confident that the Kraken was not down here.

The basement was more of a service tunnel than a floor in its own right. It was only about half as wide as the upper floor, pipes run in rows along the length of the room, splitting off to service each fish tank upstairs. The drains dropped straight down, ending a foot or so above a grated trough running towards a larger drain running running down the middle of the floor.

The ceiling wasn't that high but with the maze of pipes running across it made it seem even lower than it was. Danny, who wasn't that tall, felt the need to duck as he walked under the pipes.

There was a pile of machinery at the end of the basement, under what would be the loading dock. Danny wandered off to look at them. One looked like a diesel hooked to a generator. A large doomed steel tank sat next to it. It took Danny a moment to realize that instead of some kind of auxiliary generator this was an air compressor. Looking overhead Danny could faintly see steel plates set in the ceiling. Trap doors so the heavy machinery could be lowered down.

Next to it was a series of large, open tanks. A pipe lead from the wall of the basement towards the tanks, with a gap where a meter might have been. Pipes lead off the bottom of the tanks but Danny couldn't follow them through the maze of pipes. He wondered if this was where the workers at the Aquarium had treated the city water before adding it to the fish tanks above. He vaguely recalled that tap water couldn't be directly added to fish tanks because of the chlorine.

The girls had wandered ahead, having no interest in old machines. "Just like a girl," Danny mused. "They're probably talking about knitting or something." He took to the air and floated after them.

Actually Sam, after watching Danny wander off to look at the machinery had thought "Boys and their machines!" in the same contemptuous tone Danny had used about them. Turning back to the red-haired girl she asked, "So what's the story on this treasure you guys are looking for?"

"After we heard about the attacks of the monster here we decided to look up the history of the Aquarium and see what kind of story it had. That's when we discovered the story about the bank robber."

"And thought the monster was the ghost of this bank robber come back for his treasure?"

"We figured it was someone playing on the superstitions about the ghost of Phineas George to cover up their searching for the missing treasure."

"Here in Amity Park the ghosts are more likely to be real." Sam looked across Zelda to where Danny was silently floating along, and smiled. "So how much did he steal and how did he end up here?"

"$20,000 in twenty dollar gold coin."

"Gold? When did this happen?"

"1923"

"Ah. They withdrew gold from circulation in 1933. There hasn't been a gold coin since."

"I didn't know that. How did you know so much about it?"

"My parents haven't forgiven FDR for 'ruining' the country. They weren't even alive at the time but still hold him personally responsible for everything they dislike."

"Sounds like Phyllidia's family. Old Money. Real snooty. My parents are doing well enough but I'm kind of the pauper in the group."

"Even that stoner dude has money?"

"Groovy is not a stoner. He's just - ah - different, special.

"And that has nothing to do with what chemicals he puts in his body?"

"He doesn't smoke. His parents were surfers. That's all."

"Sorry I asked. So he's the one you have your eyes on."

"I thought we had an understanding but that dog...!"

"You really don't like that dog. Is it all dogs or just him. Do you like cats?"

"Cats are OK. So are dogs. It's just Alphonse. He - it's like he doesn't like me."

"Afraid of you taking Groovy away from him?"

"Now you're being silly. He's just a dog."

Sam mused that when it came to ghosts 'just' didn't necessary mean what it meant. "Getting back to this bank robbery, Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin is a lot of money. What were they doing with so much in their bank?"

"Some guy named Townsend Scott had just sold off a sawmill and the leases for a stand of trees. He was kind of a crackpot, apparently, only took payment in gold or silver. So the buyer had to come up with $20,000 dollars in gold coins. The bank was in the process of shipping it off to the treasury in exchange for certificates of deposits when ol' Phineas struck. Took the guards by surprise, grabbed the bag with all the money in it and started running. They chased him into this park and saw him entering the Aquarium.

"They hesitated to go in because the Aquarium was still open and had people inside. They didn't want to risk a shot-out with Phineas where someone could be hurt. So they staked out the building. Around dusk he tried to sneak out but the police caught him. They found the bank's money sack on him, empty, but they never found any of the money. The searched the place numerous times since and never found any of the gold coins."

"That had to be a lot of coins," Sam said.

"Twenty dollar gold pieces."

"So a thousand gold coins. Probably bigger and heavier than a quarter." Sam calculated for a moment. "At least 25 coin rolls, probably sixty to eighty pounds... How did he ever expect to run away with that much weight over his shoulder?"

"And where could he have put that much coinage in this place, and not have it found by now?" Zelda added.

The three were wandering slowly towards the center of the building, following the trough in the floor. Suddenly up ahead they could see flickering lights, that after a moment resolved into the flashlights of Curtis and the others. They had explored the back side of the aquarium, too, on the other side of the hall and down into the basement. The nattily dressed blond of the Crew Clew was shaking his head. "I'm beginning to think maybe Phineas George never brought any of that bank money here. There's just no place to hide it that hasn't been searched already!"

"Well, there is that central drain we passed," Phyllidia reminded him. "We haven't looked there yet."

"Like, it would take a scuba diver to look down there," Groovy complained.

"Reigh! Rubba! The dog barked.

No one else seemed to notice that dog apparently saying, "right, scuba." Danny looked at the big black and brown animal, thinking about Zelda's comment about it always watching her. The dog caught Danny looking at it and ran to cower behind Groovy.

Curtis lead the way to the central drain. The troughs in the center of the floor in each of the wings ran into a circular pit about six feet wide and twenty deep. Groovy was about to walk on the grate covering the pit but Curtis warned him off, saying that the grates were so old and rusted there was no telling how strong they were anymore.

"This doesn't seem like the sort of place to hide a bag full of coins," Zelda said, nervously pushing her glasses up her nose. She always worried when bending over something like this, a sewer, that her glasses would slip off and fall into the murky waters, leaving her effectively blind.

"Seems like a good place to me." Curtis said.

"But to get them out would require a scuba suit like Groovey said, only they didn't have scuba in 1923 so it would have been one of those copper-helmeted deep sea diving suits," Zelda explained. "So the crook would have needed someone along with him to operate the air pump, and a crane to lower him into the pit."

They stood around the pit for a moment. "Danny, you could go do there and look around," Zelda suggested.

"Are you kidding. It smells bad enough up here. I'm not going down where it's really stinky. Besides I need some light to see and that water looks as black as coal!"

"But you could go intangible and look under the water and sediment."

"When I'm intangible; stuff is intangible to me! I couldn't feel a bag of coins down there if I wanted to!"

"He's right," Sam said. "Besides this is too obvious. I'm sure they've had people down there with rakes and shovels looking for the gold." She started walking down the corridor towards the front of the building. "I don't think we're going to find anything down in this basement," she opined. "There's just not enough hiding places." She found another set of stairs and ascended.

Danny was close behind her with Zelda sticking close to him. The room they entered while different from the back room they have left to enter the basement, was much the same. Tanks, catwalks, tables and cabinets a clutters of cans and buckets on the floor, papers abandoned on the tables. For some reason the pipe railing surrounding the stairwell had been removed. Plates still screwed into the floor showed were the railing used to be.

Phyl and Curtis came up the stairs together looking, as always, like The Cute Couple. Zelda went over to ask Phyllidia a question just as Groovy's head poked it's shaggy way above the concrete floor. Suddenly with a clatter of claws, Alphonse ran up the steps. The dog ran between Zelda and Phyllidia, muscling his way between the two girls. Zelda tottered back until her foot suddenly hit open air. and just like that she flipped over and plunged down the shaft.

"Zel!" Groovy shouted, trying to turn around on the steep cement steps to catch her but she was too far away and the steep, narrow steps hard to maneuver on. Phyllidia tried to grab Zelda's hand but it whipped past her too fast to seize. The Clew Crew stood to horror as Zelda dropped out of sight down a deep and unforgiving hole.


	4. Chapter 4

"Zel!" Groovy shouted, trying to turn around on the steep cement steps to catch her but she was too far away and the narrow steps hard to maneuver on. Phyllidia tried to grab Zelda's hand but it whipped past her too fast to seize. The Clew Crew stood to horror as Zelda dropped out of sight down a deep and unforgiving hole.

Danny rocketed past all of them, a hand outstretched to reach the falling girl. He flew down the stairwell going 120 miles and hour. He didn't think about the rapidly approaching cement steps or how he was going to get out of there once - or if - he caught the falling girl. His entire body was focused on getting a hand on Zelda. Or a flailing leg as it whipped past him. Outstretched fingers caught at it and his thumb pressed down in a solid grip. Danny, holding Zelda by the barest of grips disappeared into the wall of the stairwell, a ghost sliding intangible through the solid earth.

There was no light in the earth beyond the Aquarium's foundations, nothing to guide Danny back to the surface. He paused only for a second to gain some idea of which way was up and down. He went what he hoped was "up" and after long moments broke into moonlight and fresh air. He gasped with relief as he saw the trees of Memorial park beyond him and felt Zelda struggling below him. That meant she was alive! He had saved her from certain death. He couldn't believe he had done it.

A flailing hand caught his foot. Zelda had been hanging upside down from Danny's point of view. With a hand on his foot she pulled herself upright before flinging an arm around his neck and holding on suffocatingly tight. "Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god!" she said over and over into Danny's ear. He could feel her whole body trembling in shock.

After a moment she paused, too a deep breath and whispered, marvelling, "We flew through rock, the earth. I couldn't see a thing. It was so scary."

"The only way I could catch you in time was to keep going forward. Sorry."

"That means you dematerialIzed me!"

"Yeah."

"Uh - does this mean my clothes were left behind in the Aquarium?"

"No," Danny laughed. "You're dressed. Feeling better?"

"No."

Now that he could see the sky Danny had an idea where they were. He had flown a good block underground. He turned back to the Aquarium, landing outside next to a park bench since he figured Zelda needed a moment to compose herself. As soon as her feet touched the ground and he removed his levitating support she collapsed like an empty sack. He caught her as she fell and carried her over to the bench where they sat down.

She continued clinging to Danny and trembling. She was quiet for a while then confessed "My life flashed before my eyes. Only there was nothing there, just the sight of the steps about to smash into my face. I can't believe I had no life to flash before my eyes. I've wasted my whole life!" she started sobbing softly.

Danny wasn't sure if this constituted progress but assumed that it was. "You know, I don't think people's lives flash before them just before they die," he suggested. "I've always noticed that I'm too busy trying to figure out how to stay alive to worry whether my life had any meaning."

"So this is old hat to you?" she asked.

"It's never old hat.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said then kissed him, on the cheek, the neck, the ear, the forehead and even, more or less, on the lips. She was too busy kissing to aim accurately.

After a moment he pushed her back. "we ought to get back," he said, "I'm sure our friends are beginning to worry about our being away for so long."

"I don't want to go back inside."

"I don't blame you, but I think you're in danger and I can better protect you if you stay close to me."

"I can do that but why do you have to go back inside?"

"Because the Kraken has its lair there. I've got to get the Kraken before more people get hurt."

"But that wasn't a ghost just now. It was an accident with Alphonse."

"Maybe. But whoever was driving your "Clewmobile" was a ghost. It may not be the Kraken. It was an undefined blob of ectoplasm. The Kraken has a very specific shape. Someone is after you. I don't know who or why but I intend to get them as well."

Danny stood up and held out a hand to Zelda. She used it to pull herself off the park bench. For a moment her legs turned rubbery and Danny held her tight again until she could stand up by herself. As he was about to fly her back into the abandoned Aquarium Danny said, "If you kissed Groovy like you did me just now I don't think you'd worry about having to gain his undivided attention."

Sam was climbing up the stairs as Danny and Zelda got back. "There's no bodies down there so he must have caught..." She broke off when she saw Danny materialize in the room with Zelda holding on to him. Sam rushed up the rest of the steps and flung herself on Danny. "Thank god, you're all right," she cried.

"Sorry to make you worry," Danny told her, thinking he could get used to all these ladies hugging on to him.

"I think we all should get back to looking for that treasure," Curtis said after a while. ""We'll never find it tonight unless we get busy looking for it."

"Knock yourselves out," Danny said, "but I came here for the Kraken. I think I know where he's at and it's time to quit farting around and go get him."

"What do you mean? You've known all along!" Sam accused. "You let us waste time here instead of catching that ghost?"

"I'm sorry. It was just kind of fun poking around in all the stuff leftover from when the Aquarium closed. I was pretty sure the Kraken wasn't going anywhere so I figured we had the time. Besides," he looked at Sam with a superior smile on his lips, "I thought you were enjoying yourself poking around, too." Sam scowled as her face grew warm with embarrassment.

"Like, who's this Kraken you're looking for," Groovy asked. He'd held on to Zelda after everyone had hugged her.

"The ghost that's been haunting the Aquarium."

"It has a name? Like, how do you know it's name?" Groovy looked at Danny with a confused expression.

"I asked him the first time we met. - so I could put him in my database," Danny explained.

"You asked him?" Curtis echoed. "Ghosts have names?"

Danny pointed to himself. "Hello, Danny Phantom! Of course ghosts have names. They're just like people, except they don't belong in this universe. "

"But the Kraken, was, like, this big hairy monster. 'Release the kraken' and all that," Groovy protested. "The ghost that attacked Zelda last night wasn't exactly big or hairy. How can that be the Kraken."

"We'll ask him when I catch him, OK? What do I know, maybe he had a very good publicity agent back in ancient Grecian times. Maybe everyone thought he was big and nasty because all they ever heard was his agent saying he was. Maybe he once was big and nasty back when people believed in monsters and when people started not believing in monsters he dwindled away. Like the way Ember McClain needs people to say her name because it gives her power. And when people stop saying her name she becomes weak and powerless."

"I remember Ember McClain," Phyllidia exclaimed. "She was that one-hit wonder everyone was talking about. I wonder what happened to her?"

"I threw her back into the Ghost Zone," Danny said. "She was being a very bad girl."

"Ember McClain was a ghost?"

"Sadly," Danny said with a sigh. "Well, it's been fun, but I've got a ghost to capture." Without another word Danny walked through the wall into the main corridor of the old building.

A thumping on one of the fish tank display cases caused him to look back. Sam's head was in the tank shouting angrily at him. Danny couldn't hear what she was saying through the thick glass. She waved him to come back.

"What are you thinking, leaving me behind with those people!" she demanded when he floated back into the back room.

"It could be dangerous. I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Like the other eighteen million times weren't dangerous! You don't leave me behind!"

The others seemed just as eager to see Danny take down the Kraken so with a sigh he had everyone grab hands and carried them through the wall from the work room into the public concourse.

He led the way to the intersection in the center of the building. He pointed to a corner of the square on the left side. "This is where Zelda was attacked last night. This is also where I was attacked when I visited later last night. I'm pretty sure this is the Kraken's lair. And it's probably where your treasure is, too."

"The treasure!" Curtis exclaimed. How do you know it's there?"

"Of course," Sam muttered. "The Kraken is a kind of sea monster or sea serpent, and what are sea serpents but a kind of dragon, a sea-dragon."

"And dragon's always guard treasures!" Zelda finished for her. "It's all so obvious."

"Assuming that this Kraken-ghost thingy is hold up there," Curtis cautioned. "How are you going to get it out?"

"The usual way. I'll attract its attention."

"What can we do?" Zelda asked. She had been dismayed when Danny had first left without her and now was following him at his elbow. Sam was on the other side of Danny.

"Mostly keep out of the way. Sam has her "goop" gun but I think that's it for weapons."

"I always carry a Fenton Lipstick." Sam added, "when goop just isn't good enough."

With a quick look around to see that everyone was staying back Danny walked up to the tank labeled "Alligator Gar" and tapped on the glass "Come out, come out, where ever you are." he called but no ghost issued forth.

He tried knocking on the glass again.

When nothing happened he tried pounding on the glass wall of the tank but surprisingly the glass was stronger than his best blow.

"Where's a 2 by 4 when you need one," he muttered, thinking of the story of the man who hit a mule over the head with a 2 x 4 'just get its attention.' Around the outer wall just under the tanks was a handrail, to keep people from crowding too close to the fish tanks. Danny grabbed hold a length near the end and yanked on it with all his strength. a six foot length broken off in his hand. He swung it as hard as he could against the glass, which finally shattered in a spray of glass chips, water and mud.

The murky water at the bottom of the tank spilled out on to the floor and spread out. As the water ran out it carried away some of the mud and sand at the bottom of the tank. Lumps started appearing on the floor of the tank. Round and with the occasional sparkle. Danny went to pick up one of the round lumps when with a hiss the blue shirted man-sized ghost leaped out clutching the coin Danny held in his hand. "Mine!" the Kraken hissed.

It tried to rip the glob of material from Danny's hand but Danny closed tight on it and struck at the Crocodile faced ghost with his free hand. "Not yours!" Danny told it.

The Kraken recoiled then leaped on Danny, carrying him to the floor, the glob popped out of Danny's fist and rolled to Curtis's feet. Absent-mindedly, the tall blond bent and picked it up. He looked at the discolored lump then rubbed at it with his fingers.

Danny was wishing he had paid more attention in gym class when the couch was teaching them wrestling. The Kraken had him pinned down and Danny couldn't think of any way to break his hold. They rolled back and forth on the floor but nothing changed on the hold the Kraken had on him.

"Look, gold," Curtis exclaimed, showing the cleaned up lump to Phyllidia.

"It's the treasure!" she squealed. Curtis was about to hold it out to Zelda and Groovy when the Kraken jumped up and with a cry of "Mine" leaped for the coin in Curtis' hand.

"Not so fast!" Danny said, catching hold of the Kraken's alligator-like tail as it slithered over him. He hauled the ghost back and punched it under its throat. The Kraken fell back choking. It piled up against the Aquarium wall, caught its breath after a moment and leaped back at Danny.

The ghost boy ducked under his leap and fired an ectoplasm blast after him. The monster rolled up against the Spirit of Amity park statue and ripped it from the floor. He hurled it at Danny, then leaped for Curtis, still holding the gold coin.

The statue shattered into a dozen pieces scattering like shrapnel along the long, narrow corridors. Sam had to roll out of the way as one piece smashed into the place she had been standing a moment before. Glass and muddy water poured from the shattered tank behind her.

"This is getting to dangerous!" Danny thought and took to the air, streaking like a rocket towards the Kraken. He grabbed it around the waist and hauled it up into the air, through the roof of the old building and out into the skies above Amity Park.

Well away from civilians Danny let the monster go and rammed a couple of stiff punches into its abdomen. It fell back with a grunt then charged at Danny. It bounced off a shield Danny threw up, then was covered in a large glop of ectoplasmic goo. It struggled with that for a moment.

"Why do you harass me?" the ghost demanded. "What have I ever done to you or yours. I seek only to protect that which is mine!"

"You've been harassing a lot of people around this park, people I consider under my protection. You've got to go!" Danny told it.

"I only defend that which is mine."

"You weren't even here two months ago!" Danny snapped. "These people have been here for years. You have no right to be here, or to go around scaring them." He reached behind his back and drew put a Fenton Thermos. "It's time for you to go."

"Never! You'll not steal my treasure, you - you - treasure-stealer."

"It's stolen money. It doesn't belong to you. Besides I'm getting tired of you trying to kill Zelda. She's a nice kid. She doesn't deserve to die."

"I have hurt no one!" the monster protested.

"Tell it to the marines!" Danny said, quoting something he'd heard in a movie once. He flipped open the cap to the thermos and activated its suction power. The Kraken, hovering awkwardly in the air, not at all used to flying, was yanked off its feet (as it were) and drawn towards the small metallic cylinder. "NO! Stop. Treasurer-stealer! Egg-Sucker! Bad person! I have done you no -" The last bit was cut off as the ghost disappeared into the thermos and Danny snapped the lid back into place.

"Well, that's that." Danny gloated, then puzzled as he recalled the monster's complaint that he had harmed no one. But surely dropping a statue on Zelda or driving the Clewmobile around crazily wasn't trying to harm someone what was? Or could there be two ghosts running around the same place? What were the odds of that.

Either way, the best thing to do was get back to the others.

Danny looked around for the Aquarium - they had covered quite a bit of distance fighting - and zoomed back.

He had expected to find the other grouped around the shattered Alligator Gar tank digging out the rest of the lost bank loot. They weren't there. No one was. The walls were covered with patched of "goop" from Sam's ectoplasmic squirt gun. She preferred using "goop" instead of the more lethal blaster weapons because she felt bad for the ghosts, even the nasty ones. Sam was one of the charter members of Danny's sister's "People for the Ethical Treatment of Ectoplasmic Manifestations." Sam was one for letting sleeping ghosts lie.

Danny's look of puzzlement deepened to one of concern when he saw short lines of scorched and bubbled glazed tiles. That would be the Fenton Lipstick Blaster she always carried as back-up, or in case things got too serious for "goop."

"Sam! Tucker! Zelda!" he called out as loudly as he could. His voice echoed off the hard tiles. He waited for an answer. There was a tightness in his throat and suddenly the smugness at having caught the Kraken deserted him. Something had attacked his friends. Not the Kraken, because he had caught it. it was locked away in the Fenton Thermos. But while he was out packing the Kraken away something else had come after his friends. What had it done to them.

He called again and this time Danny hear a faint "here!" in answer.

He tore down the corridor he'd heard her voice. It was only a short distance but Sam's voice had sounded faint. Danny found her sprawled on the floor, leaning against the tile wall and slowly rubbing her head. Her skirt was covered in dirt while her purple tights were a ruin of laddered runs.

"What happened?"

"It took us by surprise. None of us saw it coming."

"What? What did this?"

"Ghost. Just an black blob. Old man's eyes. It grabbed Zelda and scattered the rest of us like toys."

"Are you alright?"

"Do I look alright?" Sam demanded. That relieved Danny more than anything else. If Sam was getting crabby, then she was alright. "Should I call 911?" he asked, just to be sure.

"No. I'll be alright. What about the others?"

"Where are they?"

Sam started to shake her head but stopped with a groan. "I don't know. I was trying to nail the ghost with the "goop" gun. Don't stop him. Tried the blaster and got slammed into the wall. I was shaking off sparks in my head when I heard you calling. "How long as I out?"

"I don't think you were out at all. It only took me a minute to package the Kraken. Where's the others?"

"The ghost went down here with Zelda and I followed but I don't know where the others are."

"Zelda?" Danny had a sinking feeling about this. "Will you be OK here? I've got to find her."

"Just get me my flashlight and lipstick-blaster. They fell that way somewhere."

Danny quickly found the two items than took off back the way he came. He went down one corridor after another before finding Curtis, Phyllidia and Groovy near the intersection of the last corridor. Groovy was spread out on the floor, his face covered in blood. Phyllidia had her purse open and was doling out gauze squares to Curtis who was rolling them up and sticking them in Groovy's nose. The nose looked flattened and was bleeding freely. "You guys OK?" he asked.

"Groovy will never be a "Noble Roman" but other than that we're OK, I guess," Phyllidia explained. She ran a hand around Groovy's head. When he cried out in pain she opened up some more packets of gauze and taped it place with some adhesive. tape.

"Where's Zelda?" Danny demanded.

"Isn't she with your friend, Sarah - no, Sam?"

"No. Any of you see where she went. Sam says she was being held by the ghost that attacked you?"

"Didn't see it," Curtis answered. To Phyllidia he asked, "should we call an ambulance? Groovy doesn't look so good. "

"It's just the blood from the broken nose," Phyllidia told him. "He'll be alright for now. I've got this covered. You - find Zelda!"

Curtis looked up at Danny. "Have you been..."

"I've been every where in here. She'd not here. I don't know who has her or what he wants. I caught the Kraken so it isn't him. It puts everything in doubt.." Danny thought for a moment. "Look, Sam's down that hall. Go get her and bring her to this intersection. I'm going outside to look for Zelda." He was gone before Curtis had time to answer.

Danny phased through the walls of the Aquarium and circled the building looking for the missing girl. "Hey, boychek!" A voice called to him. Danny spun around and found a dark blobby looking ghost hanging a few feet off the ground in the middle of the parking lot, light from a lone operating street light revealed Zelda hanging from a smoky arm. She was held by one wrist and was struggling to get free. The ghost holding her seemed unconcerned by her struggles.

"Let her go!" Danny shouted.

"I intend to," the ghost replied in what sounded like an old man's voice. But instead of dropping the girl, it zoomed straight up into the sky. Danny followed.

The strange ghost stopped when they were close to a mile in the air. The city of Amity park spread out below them in a wide field of twinkling lights of red, white, and yellow. Clouds drifted below them, light on the top by light from the full moon. A stiff breeze tugged at Danny's hair.

He closed in on the ghost who suddenly held the still struggling Zelda out in front of him. "Uh-uh-uha!" It warned. "You don't want me to drop her?"

Danny stopped twenty feet from the other ghost. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.

"I had a sweet gig till you came along. All the sweet patutties an old man could want. All the laps I ever wanted to sit on, to lean against their boobalas, look up their skirts. It was heaven. And a lot better than the heaven my old woman was always harping on. Well, she can have her heaven, I have mine. Or at least I did till you showed up!"

"What did I do?" Danny asked, perplexed.

"What do you think? You're a ghost. I can hide from them but not from you. You had to go."

"So why did you kidnap Zelda?"

"Oh, her. She has to go, too. She was asking too many questions. I hate to destroy such delectable female pulchritude but she's just too curious. It's nothing personal," this the ghost directed to the girl.

"Nothing personal? You're trying to kill me!" she screamed back at the ghost holding her.

"You hurt her and I won't stop till I've captured her," Danny warned.

"Will you, boychek?" The ghost gloated. "If I drop her you have two choices. You can try to capture me, in which case your girlfriend here falls to her death. Or you can try to catch her, by which time I'll be long gone. And if you do come after me, the next time it'll be the black-haired chick. So just leave me alone."

"You -!" Danny swore. He lunged at the ghost, who laughed and opened his fist. He was surprised when Zelda didn't immediately fall. She had wrestled around and gotten her other hand on the ghost's arm. She was holding on for dear life. With a snigger the ghost made his arm disappear. Zelda plummeted away with a scream.

Danny hesitated for a tenth of a second before diving after the falling girl. With a final laugh the dark blobby ghost disappeared.

All bodies fall to the center of the earth at a speed of thirty-two feet per second per second. Speed piles up second by second until a final velocity of seven miles per second is reached - escape velocity. Bodies falling through an atmosphere face a certain amount of air resistance, though, and as a result, the terminal velocity of a falling human is around 120 miles per hour. Faster if the body is folded into a compact cross-section, slower if the arms and legs are spread out to increase wind resistance. Zelda, flailing wildly was approaching the higher end of terminal velocity.

Danny wasn't falling, he was speeding downward. But it was a downward chase. Every hundred feet he traveled she fell another 60. The ground was dizzily rearing up in front of them. Danny was ten feet from Zelda, then 5 feet, slowly he got within three feet, then two. Slowly his hand inched within reach of hers.

Got her!

His hand settled around her's. He started to pull up, levitating her body as much as he could. But it had a tremendous amount of momentum from falling so far. It took time to slow down.

They crashed into the top of an oak, snapping branches left and right, tearing at their clothes. They hit a large limb with a breath-shaking thump and moments later Danny planted his feet on the ground and brought Zelda around to settle down as well.

She clung to Danny for a moment, then pushed away.

"That's it!" she muttered. "That's it! That's it!" And started walking towards the lights of the street beyond the park.

"Zelda! Where are you going?" Danny called.

"Away! Just away. Don't follow me. I don't want anything to do with you, or them or anybody! If some homicidal ghost wants me to stop asking questions, I'm never going to ask another question in my life!"

"But..." Danny stopped, realizing that Zelda was beyond reasoning with at the moment. He watched her get to the street, then collapse on a park bench. She huddled down like she might be crying. He didn't want to leave her there, alone and friendless but he sensed that at the moment he might not be the person she was hoping would come to her.

He saw that the Aquarium was only a block away and flew back inside. Sam was sitting on the floor closer to the middle of the building watching the rest of the Clew Crew dig through the sand and mud in the Alligator Gar tank for the rest of the missing bank loot. They were as giddy as kids in a candy store.

"I thought they were all about the solving of mysteries?" Danny said.

"Right, and you weren't the least bit excited that your guess where the treasure was, was right?"

"I was after the Kraken - and I got him. Then I went after this other ghost that kidnapped Zelda. Are any of them at all concerned where Zelda might be, or what's happened to her?"

"You didn't bring her back. That does concern me." Sam stretched than started to get up. "That Phyllidia girl said I didn't have a concussion, which seems like good news, even if it's from another teen-ager. So what's become of the fourth Clew Crewer?"

"Having a nervous breakdown, I think. She's sitting on a bench out by the street. I was wondering if you could keep her company for a while?"

"Shouldn't that be the job of her boyfriend?" Sam wondered.

"I'll try to get them out of here, too. Just try to get Zelda to come back to the parking lot, OK. I think I've got this all but wrapped up and I think she'll be a lot happier seeing the ending."

"Leave the psychology stuff to your sister." Sam said as she started walking to the back of the building and the open door there.

Danny watched her go. Before tackling Zelda' erstwhile friends, he unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled out his cellphone. He hit a button and waited for his call to be picked up.

"Do you know what time it is?" A cranky voice answered.

"Love you, too, Jazz," Danny replied. "Look, can you grab the Fenton Peeler and met me in front of the old Aquarium in Memorial Park? Oh, and bring another Thermos? The one I've got is full." He listened for a moment. "If you don't come you wouldn't be able to met my new friends. - Yes, yes, they're interesting. - yes. You could probably get a case study out of them. - I can't diagnosis them over the phone. Come over and meet them. Please. And don't forget the Peeler." After a final pause Danny put his phone away.

"Pretty clever, huh?" he said by way of announcing his presence.

"It looks to be all here," Curtis replied, head still inside the tank scrapping out dirt and coins. Phyllidia had found an old bucket she was piling the coins in as she and Groovy scrapped off the much coating them.

"Groovy, I should have mentioned this before," Danny said, "but Amity park has a pretty strict lease law. You can't let Alphonse here run around unleashed. I'd hate to see him grabbed by Animal Control and taken to the pound. And of course, cops around here are authorized to shoot any dog that they consider a threat."

"Alphonse here would never hurt anyone." Groovy protested, wrapping an arm around the Rottweiler.

"Still, Danny has a point," Curtis said, pulling his head out of the broken aquarium and standing up. "We don't want to get in trouble around here. So maybe you should keep a good hold on him for the time being, until we can find a leash."

"I'm sorry ol' boy," Groovy said, wrapping his hand around the dog's collar. "No body believes what a wonderful boy you are but me."

"Where's Zelda?" Phyllidia asked, noticing that there was no one behind Danny.

"Outside. Sam's keeping her company, but I think you all ought to come out and be with her. The ghost that kidnapped her tried to kill her and I don't think she's taking it well."

"Well..." Curtis hesitated.

"She's a part of your crew isn't she?"

"She did sort of quit."

"But she's still a friend, right?" 

"Danny has a point," Phyllidia said. "Friends are more important than treasure!"

"Besides we can come back later and finish gathering it up," Curtis said. Danny looked at him intently, wondering if he , too, was possessed by a ghost. He decided with a shake that it was probably just greed. He finally got them going, reminding Groovy to keep a good hold on the dog. When they finally got around to the front of the abandoned Aquarium they found a red-headed girl leaning against a decrepit Chevy Chevette. She had some kind of loop device around one wrist. Sam and Zelda were no where to be seen.

"This had better be good." Jazz warned Danny.

"Let me get Sam and Zelda, first. Don't worry this will be good."

Sam found the red-head sitting on a bench at the far end of the park. She was silently crying but her whole body was shaking. Sam, an only child, wasn't much used to dealing with extreme emotions in others. A pat on the shoulders and a "there, there," didn't seems like an adequate response. And hugging someone she's met only two hours before seemed a bit uncomfortable.

She sat down on the far end of the bench with a non-committal "Hey."

While waiting for Zelda to respond Sam twiddled with the laddered fabric of her tights.

After a time Zelda sat up a little, rubbed the tears out of her eyes and cleared her nose with a loud snuff. "What do you want?" she asked in an accusing voice.

"Danny didn't think you should be alone."

"I don't need your help."

"Fine. I'm not offering any."

They in silence for a while longer. Zelda searched the pockets of her orange jumpsuit for some tissues, then wiped her running nose on her sleeve.

"I'm surprised he didn't tell you to wear pants, too?" Zelda said after watching Sam play with her ruined tights.

"Oh, this is nothing. I've ruined tights just by going to school.

"Well, I don't need his advice or his help!" Zelda insisted. "I suppose he thinks I'm going to do myself in or something."

"I think if he thought that he'd have come himself. Danny made sure I had a blaster with me so I imagine he wanted me to protect you while he did something else. I think he has things pretty well wrapped up. At least that was my impression.

"He nearly let me get killed."

"He saved your life."

"I can't take it any more!"

":I don't blame you," Sam said. "I mean, I only met you tonight and already there's been three attempts on your life..."

"Four."

"The van, getting knocked down the stairs and just now..." Sam counted.

"And the statute being dropped on my head. That's how I wound up in that pool of mud. But you weren't there at the time."

"Oh. Yeah. Ok, four. Wow, what a night." After a moment Sam added, "Look, I've sorry I called you a bimbo. I was mad at Danny for letting me worry for an hour without calling. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"Oh, I thought you were his girlfriend or something."

"Me? Danny's girlfriend? Ha ha ha," Sam's laugh trailed off unconvincingly. "We're just friends, but I guess I do get possessive sometimes."

"Kind of like how Groovy's my boyfriend, except when he's not because all he can see anymore is that darn dog."

"Has he always been like that?"

"Who? Groovy?"

"No, the dog. I've only seen him a little bit tonight but he doesn't act like most normal dogs. I mean I thought he heard him speak and everything. "

"He used to be just a dog but then - it's just weird. He started talking, finding clues, helping us solve mysteries, but mostly hogging all of Groovy's time and attention. I joke that when I look at him now I see the eyes of a 90 year old man looking back at me... But that's just crazy. He's a dog.

"When did he start acting differently?" Danny asked, coming up on them by surprise. He leaned against the back of the park bench and looked at Zelda.

"The first time I recall Alphonse acting strange was the day we went to the nursing home to see Curtis' Uncle Harry. "

"Did he die there?" Danny asked.

"Uncle Harry? Heavens, no! He had just had hip replacement surgery and went into the nursing home for recovery and physical therapy. He's fine. -Though, now that I think about it, someone did die while we were there. At least we saw some ambulance attendants wheeling away a gurney with a covered form on it as we were leaving. ...

"Anyway, the drive from Charity Harbor to Marysville, where the nursing home was, was a bit of a long drive, so Curtis' uncle Harry said we could stay overnight in his house. Driving out there Alphonse seemed unusually active, sniffing everything in the Clewmobile as if he'd never been inside it before, sniffing Phyl's hair - she was sitting up front with Curtis, of course - licking her hand, but mostly trying to climb into my lap. Groovy has never been good about training Alphonse so he would often try to jump on people. But usually after you've pushed him off once or twice he would get the idea and leave you alone. But this night he just wouldn't stop. So I went to the bedroom Phyl and I were sharing to unpack my suitcase. But really to get away from the dog.

"I was kneeling on the floor unpacking the suitcase when out of the blue something cold and wet goosed me in the butt. I screamed bloody hell and scrambled away from whatever had poked me - I was scared shitless because whatever had poked me had poked me under my skirt! I felt violated as well as terrorized.

I turned around and there was Alphonse, sniggering, as much as one could say a dog sniggers. Then it barked. Only it wasn't exactly a bark. It sounded more like "hubba-hubba."

I screamed for Groovy to come and get his dog and explained what had happened. Groovy was like, 'dogs are like that, that's how they show they like you," and I was screaming at him how the dog had deliberating put its nose under my skirt and dogs don't do that.

He would not understand what I was getting at or why I was so mad. Finally I told him to control his dog 'or someone going to get neutered.'

"He whined that that would terrible cruel to Alphonse. I should have told him then that I didn't say it would be the dog that would get neutered! - you always think of the really good lines long after the moment has passed.

"But anyway every since then Alphonse - and Groovy, too - have acted strange. He's always watching Phyl and me, trying to climb on us, watching us get dressed, even go to the bathroom. The dog's a pervert."

"You're right," Sam injected. "I remember when Danny finally got you out of that van and the dog jumped on you, only it was like he make a point of pawing your breasts."

Danny was nodding. "You say you see the eyes of a 90 year old man looking out? You may be right. Come on. Let's wrap this thing up and go home."

He lead them back to the parking lot where Jazz and the others were waiting for them.

"This is my sis - friend, Jazz Fenton," Danny began by way of introduction. "I asked her to come out to help us get to the bottom of what's going on."

"At first I thought Zelda was being attacked by the Kraken but this last time I had the Kraken inside a Fenton Thermos, so there was no way he could have done it. That meant there was a second ghost involved, one that wasn't here before tonight. But it was always disappearing quickly after making an attack. Where was it going that it could disappear that easily and yet still be close enough to find opportunities to attack Zelda. As a ghost myself, I know a few ways of doing that. Which is why I called in Jazz here. Jazz has brought with her a little gizmo called a Fenton Peeler. It's a nasty little gadget that can peel away the layers of a ghost atom by atom. It's especially useful when a ghost has possessed someone. So, Jazz, take it away. Oh, and Groovy, thanks for keeping a good grip on Alphonse - leash law, you know."

Alphonse had gone berserk, snarling, leaping and tearing and trying to bite Groovy's hand. "Alphonse!" the hippie cried out, "what has gotten into you?"

As Danny passed beside Jazz he whispered a word to her.

Jazz Fenton stepped out to get a clear view of the struggling twosome. She was holding a circular device in her hand, like a large letter "D." She pressed a button on its side and the device shivered, and started unfolding. Plates shot out one way to cover her hand and the other way to cover her arm. The plates continued unfolding as they engulfed her head with a helmet with a large, clear faceplate, extended over her other arm and down her body until torso and legs were covered in armor. It had taken perhaps two seconds to completely cover her.

A light on the Peeler switched from green to red and a near invisible beam of energy shot out. It struck the lanky boy and his dog. For an instant they were both frozen in place by the ray's power but then something started happening - to the dog!

The dog started to glow a eerie pale green, then slowly, as if in the presence of a strong wind the glow began to slip off the dog and form onto a cloud behind it. Groovy's hair whipped about in the energy from blue stream but otherwise it had no effect on him.

The dog continued to twist and squirm in the boy's hand but the 'wind' from the Fenton Peeler continued to blow greenish bits from off the dog. Slowly a large dark blobby form coalesced out of the cloud. Angry, old eyes stared out from the blob. Then the blob began to blow away in the continuous fire from the peeler. As the dark cloud faded away all that was left was a short, thin, old man with a pronounced crook to his back. "All right! All right!" the ghost croaked, "you win. Turn off that darn thing. It hurts like heck.!"

Jazz took her finger off the button but kept the Peeler ready.

"Who are you?" Curtis demanded, awe in his voice as the sight of the ghost that had been hidden inside the dog.

"What were you doing to my dog?" Groovy asked. Alphonse, with a shudder, had stopped fighting Groovy's hold on his collar and laid down at his feet, curling up into a ball.

"Why were you trying to kill me?" Zelda said, taking a step toward's the hovering ghost.

"You watched me bath!" Phyllidia wrapped her arms close around her chest.

"Ah, to hell with you all!" the ghost snapped and tried to float away but Jazz called him back, warning, "Don't make me use this again!"

"My name's George Hillard. At least it was when I was alive. I was in that nursing home with that boy's uncle." He waved toward's Curtis. "I died and was drifting off towards that bright light in the sky when I suddenly realized that I was not looking forward to getting my 'heavenly reward.' Spending eternity with my wife would be more like hell, if you know what I mean. I'd spent 50 years with her. That was long enough. So I looked around for some way to stay here and realized - don't ask me where the knowledge came from 'cause I don't know - that if I could find a host body I could stay here as long as I wanted."

"But why my dog?" Groovy complained.

"Because no one would think that a dog could be possessed! Besides it was surrounded like lots of nice, young tail. That always griped my wife - looking at other women. All I ever did was look and she'd act like I was some kind of sex maniac.

"I think she knew you better than you do," Sam quipped, earning her a glare from the elderly ghost.

"Who wouldn't want to hang out with a couple of lovelies like these. Mystery Club, my ass, you just wanted an excuse to hang around these girls. And it would have worked if it hadn't been for you!" He pointed at Zelda.

"What did I do?"

"You kept asking questions. You kept noticing things. Sooner or later you were going to guess that I was overshadowing the dog and then I'd be up the creek without a paddle. As much as I loved sniffing up your butt, you had to go."

"Eeww!" That was Jazz.

"And you saw me chasing after the Kraken you decided to seize the distraction and do it now," Danny supplied. "But you can't blame Zelda for what were, after all, your slip-ups. If you had kept to acting like a dog no one would have suspected. But once you started making the dog do things like talk, point to clues and otherwise act like a person, you gave yourself away. So really it's all your fault."

"Aww, to hell with you."

"If I could send you into that white light I would," Danny began, "but all I can do is send you into the Ghost Zone." He flipped open the Fenton Thermos Jazz had brought with her and hit the intake button. With a swirl of ectoplasmic energy the ghost George Hillard was swept up and hauled into the container.

"And that's that." He announced. "I'm going to dump these two guys into the ghost zone and take a well deserved rest. What about you guys."

"I think my work here is done," Sam said. She looked at Zelda for a moment, then decided against a hug. She wasn't a touchy-feely kind of girl.

Jazz disarmed the Peeler and went over to talk to the Clew Crew.

"Danny?" He had been turning to go when Zelda stopped him.

"I want to thank you for everything."

"That's what I'm here for. So, what are you going to do next?"

"I'm going home."

"Not waiting for your piece of the treasure?"

"Oh, I intended to get my share of whatever reward money we get to finding the money but I've had it with the Clew Crew. It's just too crazy for me. I want to live long enough to regret my mistakes and if I stay with them I won't." After a moment she added, "Would you walk me back to the hotel?"

"Sorry, this is my clue to fade away. I've still got things to do," he held up the Thermoses. "It's been nice meeting you. Good luck with things," and he vanished. He knew he was being rude to just take off like this but if he didn't leave now he might have trouble leaving at all.

Zelda muttered a short, succinct curse and turned towards the hotel lights she could see in the distance.

Danny had just popped a cheesy potato tot into his mouth went Sam dropped into a seat across from him. She tossed a 9 by 12 inch envelope at him. "They gave this to me but I think it's for you," she said. This was about a month later.

"Muuh?" Danny said, hastily swallow his food. Lunch as Casper High was its usual noisy self. Tucker, sitting to Danny's left, leaned over to see what he had.

The envelope was address to "Sam Mansion c/o Casper High School" There was no return address. Inside were two sheets of paper and a photograph. The letters was stapled on top of the photo. He read:

Dear Sam,

I wanted to send this to Danny Phantom but I doubt that he has a mail box, I can't imagine what ghost would be doing with a mail box anyway. But if anyone can get this to Danny I'm sure you're the one.

Thanks for your help last month.

Regards,

Zelda Gaines

Under that letter was another.

Dear Danny,

Thanks again for saving my life. If there is anyway I can help you be sure to ask.

Regards,

Zelda Gaines.

PS - I took your advice about the pants..

Danny had by then forgotten what he had said about pants. Confused he turned this letter over and looked at the photo. There was Zelda alright, wearing pants.

Leather pants.

While sitting on top a small motorcycle.

She was also wearing a leather jacket, gloves and held a shiny new helmet in her hand.

There was an inscription on the photo. "Off to see where the sky meets the land - love, Zelda"

"' Love'? Woowoo," Tucker crooned. "Looks like you found yourself a girlfriend. Where was I when all this happened?"

"Asleep,Tuck, as usual."


End file.
